Revalations

Kitchen Remodel: Settling In

2011-10-31T16:14:00.000-07:00

A month has passed since we began moving into our remodeled kitchen. We're delighted, and still congratulating ourselves on what a good thing we did. We love the smooth-closing drawer glides, the large, single-bowl stainless sink, the gorgeous quartz countertop that hides crumbs almost too well, the subtle under-cabinet lighting, the west-facing window that brings late-afternoon sun into the room as well as casual sunset views. We appreciate the more subtle improvements, too, such as logically positioned light switches that make which-controls-what intuitively obvious, instead of the random trial it remained during our first six years in this house.

The inconvenience of our make-do cooking arrangements has faded from our minds, as I knew it would, along with the dust and noise and general household upheaval. The more we inhabit and move around the new space, the more we internalize new patterns and workflows, the more we bond with this delightful addition to our house.

We bought a new teak table that, at first glance, is almost indistinguishable in size and style from our old one, which dates from my first marriage. But it has two self-storing leaves and will expand to seat ten. We haven't yet tried it in that configuration. We also upgraded a couple of smaller items, like the toaster oven, which has been with us for at least half our wedded life, and the salad spinner, which predates it.

Once we knew the proportions of the dining table, we could hang our "big art" on the wall behind it. The peppers are an airbrush painting by Jose Ramirez, a draftsman Jerry used to work with. It once hung in the stairwell leading to the basement. Damned if we can remember how we got it up there in the first place. Our efforts to rehang it were almost fatal; after a couple of attempts, we gave up. There's plenty of room for it in the kitchen proper. Mary Carter's Chicken Lady, a birthday gift from Jerry that arrived just as we were starting to pack up in preparation for the remodel, is finally in her rightful place.

After that, smaller accents and refinements went in. Note, par exemple, the curvy toaster-oven, the aloe vera plant behind the sink -- no kitchen should be without one, and I have plenty to give away; just ask -- and the cat door leading to the garage (below).

Obviously I didn't tidy up before taking this series of photos. Hey, we're living here, people.

The full-height backsplash behind the stove looks better, I think, with a bird on it. (The photo is by Bill Perry, a former neighbor in Northern California.)

I'm still amazed at how big this kitchen is. Even with the table extended and the butcherblock on wheels in the middle of the room, there's plenty of space to traverse and work without bumping into drawers, walls, appliances or each other.

The dog and cats enjoy hanging out on the new deck; those squirrels are so tantalizingly close now. We have a screen and storm door on order, as well as a couple of railing-mounted holders for the hummingbird feeder, wind chimes and whirligig that used to hang from the rafters of the old deck. Eventually we'll put up an awning or some other roofing-like arrangement, but that's a project for another season.

The major item remaining on our punch list is a new pull-out work surface for the Hoosier cabinet. The tin top on the original one has worn thin -- and in some places through -- and Jerry was inspired to ask Crowley's, the company that fabricated our counters, to use part of the remaining slab to make a replacement. With any luck that'll be finished by the end of this week.

Meanwhile, Red Molly has continued her unbroken* streak: an egg a day since she began laying on October 4th (*except for the days immediately before and after her two double-yolkers). And we're down to our last three homegrown tomatoes. I guess fall is really here.

Kitchen Remodel: Final (kinda sorta) Week

2011-10-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

Last Monday, the 26th, was Jerry's birthday. He got a new kitchen. It'll never look this clean again.

I'm so glad we went for a full-height backsplash behind the cooktop. (The photo below was taken at night, with a flash; the cabinets really do match the rest of the room.)

Pantry area w/door to garage

Actually, the kitchen wasn't quite ready for action until a bit later in the week. Monday was all about ceiling and under-cabinet lights, switchplates, sink fixtures, appliance hookup, and touchup this and that.

The new refrigerator was delivered and installed on Tuesday. Our antique Hoosier cabinet will move to the same wall, next to the fridge, with the pot rack hanging above it. To tell you the truth, it's already in place, but I'm not sure I want to show you pictures yet of our pristine new space repopulated with our mundane old stuff.

Wednesday morning the city inspector came and dinged us on a few small items. He counted four stairs to the garage; we'd counted three. Four or more require a full railing, top to bottom. Steve returned and built an extension. It actually looks better now than the one we were busted on.

The existing rail on the basement stairs was also out of compliance. Its open ends presented a snag hazard; someone might catch a sleeve on one. The finish carpenter will return tomorrow to craft a new railing.

Killer Handrail

We also lacked carbon monoxide detectors within 15 feet of all bedrooms. Even though these are way outside the construction zone, current code requires them, and we must obey. Jerry bought and installed a couple, one upstairs, one down.

The inspector also had a question about the legacy outlets on the east and south kitchen walls; a conversation with the electrician should satisfy his concern. He'll return tomorrow or Tuesday, after the downstairs railing's completed, and hopefully sign off on everything.

I've totally bonded with my new toy -- I mean, the the solution I found to functioning in a Tall Person's Kitchen. It's been indispensable the last couple of days as I load the upper cabinets. Plus it's fun to kick around the room.

The tomato season is waning, alas, but I managed to harvest two batches this week. Last night's dinner was pasta with fresh tomato sauce -- cooked by Chef Jerub, on our stove, in our kitchen.

I'd give summer a mixed review

2011-09-25T16:45:00.000-07:00

Friday, the autumnal equinox, was mattress-flipping day at our house. As always, the turn of seasons (and mattresses) is cause for reflection. The remodel, despite a handful of hassles and hangups, is proceeding on schedule. We're beginning to talk about where things will live in the new kitchen. At dinner last night with friends, we allowed ourselves to fantasize about actually cooking, ourselves, again.

While we're waiting for the electrician, I want to bring y'all up to date on our backyard chicken situation. My friends who aren't on Facebook might not know that we lost a second hen this summer. Skip the next three paragraphs if you don't want to read about chicken angst; I just feel the urge to get it out.

Shelly

Three weeks ago, Shelly, our blue-laced red Wyandotte, suddenly developed trouble walking. She'd take a couple of steps, then her legs would collapse under her, as if they couldn't support her weight. It didn't present like Rachel's neurological disorder. I thought maybe she was eggbound and gave her a warm water bath and other recommended treatment before taking her to the vet. She discovered a kidney infection, which might impact the femoral artery leading to the leg. We did a course of Clavamox for that, as well as Celebrex in case the problem was muscular or joint-related. After a week, not only was there no improvement, but Shelly had stopped eating and drinking. When it looked like I wouldn't be able to get a vet appointment til the following Monday, Chris and Tonya, a very kind and knowledgeable couple whom I know from the Portland Backyard Chickens list, came by to see her and offer some advice.

Luckily we did get into the clinic on Friday. They kept Shelly for the weekend, tube-feeding her and, finally, getting enough of a fecal sample to ascertain that her kidney infection was gone. That meant they could try a cortisone shot, a tactic that had gained Rachel six more weeks of relatively high-quality life. No miracles for Shelly, though; she still wasn't eating on her own, and her breathing became labored. Monday morning, after a long conversation with the vet, I authorized euthanasia and a necroscopy.

The results of that were surprising. There had been nothing wrong with Shelly's digestive system, her reproductive tract, or her legs. What she did have was a huge fatty deposit in her abdomen and up one side into her chest -- more fat, the doc said, than she had ever seen in a chicken. And the fat had apparently constricted her heart to the point where the ventricles were a fraction of their normal size. Her liver was also fatty, though not tumorous. This has apparently been going on for months; untreated, she would probably have died soon, of congestive heart failure. What mystifies me is that she didn't present as an overweight bird, and wasn't a particularly voracious eater, even when it came to treats. It might have been something congenital in the way she metabolized fats. I've since heard of other Wyandottes that died of what might be similar causes.

Hard as it is to believe, I've actually spared you some of the more squicky details. Okay, the rest of you, it's safe to start reading again.

Perhaps I'm becoming more hardened to the ups and downs of poultry-keeping, but I do know that chickens are social animals and that Maxine -- whether she liked it or not -- would soon have new companions. Last Thursday, the final day of summer, everything clicked into place. Jerry had an audiologist appointment in Oregon City. Tonya and Chris, who live down that way, had mentioned that, should Shelly not make it through, they had some "teenagers"-- pullets old enough to live outside, and on the brink of starting to lay -- available for rehoming. We got an early start so we could have lunch at a restaurant I wanted to try (I'd done a Master Gardener phone shift with the owner). Then I dropped Jerry off at his appointment and went to see some chickens.

Chris and Tonya have a flock of about 70 birds, all of whom they've named. They recently acquired another 15 or so from a neighbor who could no longer keep them. These were the pullets -- Easter chicks, most of them, now four to five months old -- available for adoption.

Without further ado, meet Red and Muffy.

Those are the first names I came up with, and they might not stick. Red, above left, is a Red Sex-Link, a.k.a. Red Star. Muffy is an Ameraucana. Note the "muff" around her neck and the tuft of feathers sticking out from her cheeks. Ameraucanas are also distinguished by the shape of their comb and the fact that, if you're lucky, they lay blue or green eggs. Some Ameraucanas, like the South American bird from which they derive, have no tail; Muffy is one of those. If my understanding is correct, that would make her an Easter Egger -- in reference to those colored eggs -- rather than a show-quality Ameraucana, but let's not get technical. By normal chicken standards, she's definitely quirky-looking. I think she's adorable.

Here's Maxine (below) -- a Barred Rock, since we're talking breeds -- giving Red the ol' stink-eye. Our original three were best buddies from the git-go, so this is the first time I've witnessed the pecking order working itself out. Max occasionally chases the youngsters, mostly away from food, and delivers perfunctory pecks now and then. But they share the same roost at night, and I'm pretty confident they'll work it out. It's only been three days, after all. How long did it take you to get used to new roommates?

"Red" is transitioning in my mind to Red Molly, after my favorite Richard Thompson song. She seems pretty ballsy. That way we'd have Maxine, Muffy and Molly -- or Max, Muff and Moll, in normal barnyard usage. Too cute, huh? Muffy doesn't really seem the preppy type her name conjures up, but perhaps she'll wear it ironically.

So, it was a grim summer for chickens, but things are looking up. It's also been a trying couple of months on the home-improvement front, but we knew what we were getting into, and we'll soon have a new kitchen to play in. And, despite dire prognostications back in June, it turned out to be a darned good season for tomatoes. Given our limited cooking facilities, we've had to eat most of them raw. I'm not complaining.

Kitchen Remodel: Week 5

2011-09-25T13:50:00.000-07:00

The end is definitely in sight. This past week was all about surfaces -- floor, stairs and, at last, countertop. Here's the Marmoleum:

The color is called Eucalyptus. I was concerned that it would be too dark, but I think it'll be fine. The new garage stairs are also Marmoleum-clad, and edged with utilitarian metal trim. I'm glad we decided not to do the basement steps that way.

Garage stairs and railing

The finish carpenter put in a long day Thursday doing baseboards, window and door trim, and probably a score of minutiae we haven't even noticed yet. I like this elegant turn on the stairs; we all know how much fussier a miter joint is than a butt joint:

The new basement stair carpeting is a tweedy mix that picks up the blues, greens and even a bit of the yellow in the kitchen area, and manages to harmonize with the old blue-green wall-to-wall downstairs. We made sure of all this in the showroom. Installed, you can't tell. It reads like a darkish neutral, and that's okay. Basement steps do not have to make a statement.

We're very pleased with the countertop. It's going to be a stretch for me, though, to reach those windows behind the sink.

In fact, as soon as the stove hood went in, I realized that this is going to be a Tall Person's Kitchen. I can barely reach the vent controls on tiptoe.

Accordingly, I ordered a Kik Step (tm) stool from Demco, a major supplier of library furniture. I haven't bought anything from them in more than 30 years. Kik Steps, like model Ts, used to come in just one color: black. Mine will be "Celery."

I'm happy that the countertop overlaps the sink by a smidge, instead of the other way around. I find that much more pleasing, and it will be easier to clean. In fact, I'm thrilled with the sink itself.

I'm grateful, too, even though the lighting isn't fully functional yet, that we've managed to normalize the wiring so that each switch controls the most logical (i.e. closest) set of lights. It wasn't that way in the old kitchen, nor is it so elsewhere in the house.

When the electricians left after rough-in three weeks ago (it seems a lot longer than that) they said "See you at finish." According to the schedule, that's tomorrow.

Kitchen Remodel - End of Week 4

2011-09-15T17:25:00.000-07:00

It's beginning to look a lot like Kitchen....

First, though, to conclude the Saga of the Stairs: the old ones are gone gone gone. For one night we were stairless entirely. Fortunately we had plans to be out for the evening.

Good thing Sophie and the cats heeded the yellow "caution" tape. (We did put up a plywood barricade as well, as much for our welfare as for theirs.)

The new stairs are a thing of beauty, relatively speaking. I'll never take them for granted. Once we got on the right track, they were done in a day.

Nothing in this picture is really this yellow

Painting is completed, except for touchup at the end. I don't think we made a mistake with the color; we'll know more when the other big color elements -- countertop and floor -- go in.

Remember that beam dividing the full-height ceiling from the dropped portion by the big window? Here's what that stretch looks like now:

Most exciting of all, the cabinetry guys worked all day yesterday, with these results:

The cabinets are maple. Right now I'm loving the look of the wood without any hardware, but the drawer pulls will go on soon. Hopefully they'll add rather than detract.

Most of the upper cabinets have frosted glass doors. The bottom ones all pull out. No more hunting in dark, obscure corners for a colander or a funnel! No more neck-wrenching reaching for the Kitchenaid mixer! Everything closes softly, with a final damped drawing-to that's so cool to watch. I imagine it will lose its novelty eventually.

To the right of Jerry (below) is the built-in box that will enclose the new refrigerator. We measured; it should fit. We'll lose some potential fridge magnet surface, but it does look elegant this way:

We spec'd the right-most pantry wider than the left to accomodate the wine rack that my Dad made decades ago. It's been living downstairs, in the guest room, since we've been in this house, and that's just not right. I hope we have the discipline, when it comes to putting our kitchen back together, to take the time to break old patterns in favor of new arrangements that make more sense.

Jer and I journeyed to Tualatin this afternoon to see our quartz countertop slabs for the first time. It turned out that we needed to cut into a second slab for the counter plus the 4" backsplash we'd envisioned. Once it became clear that we had to buy two slabs anyway, we decided to go for a full-height backsplash behind the stovetop. Still, there'll be a substantial remnant left over, enough for a bathroom vanity, I'm guessing. Anybody interested? Seriously, we'll probably put it on Craig's List.

More to the point, I was relieved that we liked the color and pattern of the full-size slab as much as we liked the 12-square-inch sample we saw in the showroom. A good thing, since we'll be living with it for a long, long time.

Kitchen Remodel: Week 4 - Monday, Monday

2011-09-12T21:33:00.000-07:00

The decision was made this morning: The problematic basement stairs will be rebuilt. Alrighty.

The deck door arrived and was installed. It's beautiful.

Jerry realized over the weekend that the outlet we'd spec'd for the microwave, which will go into a cabinet above the oven, was missing. He alerted Steve, who alerted the electrician, who came out this afternoon and ran the wire. Whew; much easier now than it would've been a couple of days from now. The new box is on the upper right:

Sheetrocking finished this morning. Painting will proceed on schedule tomorrow.

Oh, and our block party last night was excellent. Best food ever, though we say that every year. I managed to scrape together a simple tomato salad -- just layers of sliced homegrowns sprinkled with fresh basil, s&p, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Tomato season is waning now, but yesterday I picked our first ripe plums.

Kitchen Remodel, Week Three

2011-09-09T17:01:00.000-07:00

After a delightfully calm and quiet three-day weekend, Tuesday morning brought the sheet rockers. They worked almost 12 hours, at the end of which we had recognizable interior walls. Taping and mudding followed; Dave will finish that up next Monday.

Southwest corner

Stovetop, oven and pantry wall

Ceiling (with can lights)

Meanwhile, Les made good progress on the deck. He hoped to complete it this week, but there was a glitch in delivery of the door, which meant that he couldn't finish the siding and framing of that giant rectangular hole in the side of our house. The supplier promises the door will be here on Monday. If not, I suspect heads will roll.

Then he resumed work on the basement stairs. It was a case of one step forward -- the deck -- and twelve steps back. We knew that area would present some issues. For instance, this is the tradeoff we had to make, load-bearing-wise, for raising the kitchen ceiling to a uniform height:

We haven't lost any below-stairs cabinet space, but right now it looks ugly, weird and awkward. We'll make it work somehow. It's actually less intrusive on the rest of the room than I'd feared.

I explained earlier why we're messing with the stairs at all. Scroll toward the end of my August 28th post to refresh your memory. (Yes, this will be on the test.)

The first problem came to light when the carpeting came off. That charming linoleum riser wasn't confined to the first step; nope, it went all the way down. So much for my clean-and-simple vision of varnished wooden treads and painted risers. The linoleum would probably take paint, but: uck. No, we'd have to either remove it all or cover it with wood. We opted for the latter.

Before

Working our way up

Side view (note fiber art hangings)

After (with wastebasket)

The second stair problem compounded the first. Les discovered that the original risers weren't quite perpendicular; each was off by about 1/4 inch. In addition to raising the height of each riser slightly so it would all come out even at the top, Les had to shim each one to square it up. It looks very patchworky right now, from both front and side. I'm not sure how we're going to make the funky-looking profile (below) look decent. Maybe putty and paint will suffice. After all, they're just basement stairs.

Stair risers (side view)

We'd been contemplating a carpeted runner but, even after patching and painting, the exposed portion of the risers would look kind of shabby. The dark sections (below) are the original treads, which are bullnosed and will have to be firred out. (I love construction terminology; actually, I love the specialized vocabulary associated with any given profession or pursuit.)

Then we considered running the kitchen Marmoleum down the stairs, but the unevenness of the pieced-together risers -- even after firring, filling and filing -- would likely lead to buckling and sagging down the road. And I don't love the look of those anti-slip strips that typically go on the edges of linoleum-clad stairs, and that we'd be foolish not to put in place for when we get old and unsteady.

Stair risers (head on)

So, after all this, we're going with fully-carpeted stairs again. The cats will be thrilled. Jer and I returned to the floor 'n' wall store today, surrendered the Marmoleum samples we'd had out for way too long, and chose a commercial grade carpeting that should bridge the transition between the new kitchen floor and the blue-green wall-to-wall downstairs. You can judge for yourself when it's installed.

Between the late door and the escalating (no pun intended) stair problems, it's been a difficult week. I asked Les if this was the worst set of stairs he'd ever worked on. "It's right up there in the top two," he smiled.

Hopefully next week will be less fraught. The schedule calls for painting, cabinet installation, countertop template and fabrication, and finishing up the deck, siding and stairs. What could possibly go wrong?

Our block party is this Sunday. I wondered what we could possibly contribute, given our primitive food prep facilities. Whatever it is will involve tomatoes. Here's yesterday's harvest:

Kitchen Remodel - Week Two

2011-09-03T16:12:00.000-07:00

This week started slowly, with some digging and concrete work for the second-floor deck footings, delivery of new windows and decking material, and other undramatic but necessary activity.

On Wednesday, the corner windows went in, which was kind of exciting. Here's the southwest end of the expanded kitchen, where the little deck used to be:

The downstairs deck, my preferred good-weather hangout, is not very hospitable right now, piled as it is with lumber for the upstairs deck. The boards closest to the camera (below) are the new deck flooring; they're a composite material designed to look like Ipe wood. I like the natural-appearing variations from board to board. I wish we'd used something this good-looking on our front porch when we built it, but the material probably hadn't been invented yet.

By Wednesday afternoon, the south wall of the house looked like this:

Then the pace picked up. Thursday was totally insane: two electricians and a plumber worked upstairs and down simultaneously, while Les began framing the new deck. Power went off and on unexpectedly. The noise from all quarters was varied and, at times, horrendous. The electrical work involved the breaker box, of course, which is adjacent to our makeshift kitchen sink. Several downstairs ceiling tiles in the same area were removed to run pipe or wire. Sawdust drifted ankle-deep (you think I'm kidding) in the construction zone; the west end of the basement received, through the subfloor, a light but significant coating.

I managed to escape the madness for a while to have lunch with a couple of friends. They declared it a month-to-the-day delayed celebration of my birthday, and presented me with a tiara and matching magic wand. Can you guess what I wished for?

By the end of an 11-hour workday, plumbing and electrical rough-in was complete. Here's the wall by the entrance to the kitchen, where the phone will live, as well as an outlet and light switches for most of the kitchen, including the undercabinet lights:

We'll have plenty of outlets at counter-level, too. This is the south wall to the left of the sink-to-be. I can barely imagine a functional kitchen without three-prong plug adapters and tangles of extension cords. Apparently we will have one:

Electrician Hieroglyphics

Friday AM, while Jerry and I were out shopping for cabinet pulls, the city inspector came and passed us on electrical, plumbing and framing. Woo hoo!

The rest of the week was all about the deck:

It's Labor Day weekend and, fittingly, "labor" is taking a well-earned rest. We probably won't see any action until Tuesday. But we're still on schedule and, after a week like this one, all of us -- including the animals -- can use a respite.

The tomatoes, though, are still producing.

Kitchen Remodel: One Full Week

2011-08-28T17:32:00.000-07:00

It has been a full week. Today is Sunday. Work began last Monday and continued through this afternoon.

Here's the colorful corner where the oven used to be, and will be again some day:

I love this photo compositionally. It shows where the stove hood will vent through the roof:

At this stage the small deck off the kitchen, soon to be enclosed, was a lawsuit waiting to happen. Good thing we hadn't planned a cocktail party for that evening:

Instead, Jer and I entertained ourselves by peeling paint, like sunburn:

One of our minor irritants over the years has been how easily the kitchen walls bruised. Obviously they weren't properly prepped before that bright yellow paint went on. We'll do it right this time.

Despite the amount of stuff the Rebuilding Center is taking off our hands, the dumpster was already full after a couple of days of work. I didn't see it go out, but I'll bet this tile, wherever it came from, must have added a special zing to the kitchen predating ours -- or maybe the one before that:

By Wednesday afternoon, when I last blogged, demo was complete and framing had begun. The impacted areas were almost down to studs, boards and subfloor. Speaking of which, late in the day, we -- by which I mean Steve and Les, the framer -- discovered another artifact of the earlier remodel, in which the kitchen was bumped out over a portion of the deck to create a dining nook: The old decking was still there. This caused some consternation, until we (same "we" as above) discovered that the underlying joists did, in fact, meet code. Whew; major win. The redwood stain is very similar to what Jerry and I chose for the backyard deck we put in.

Deck (left); former deck, a.k.a. dining nook subfloor (right):

Dining nook flooring, seen from below. It was disconcerting to stand in the yard and look up into the kitchen:

Thursday morning, I decided to git outta Dodge. Actually, this was a long-planned three-day excursion to Tacoma with my fiber arts pals. Our plan was to take in the APWQ show, as well as a couple of galleries and museums. We had a great time; I'm sure Gerrie and/or Terry will blog about it soon, if they haven't already.

The highlight of the trip, for me, was the Museum of Glass, especially the hot shop, where visitors can watch molten glass turned into vessels and other objects. I could have spent hours there. As it was, Jerry called in mid-performance; there was another design issue to resolve, this time involving the steps from the kitchen to the garage. I won't bore you with the details; not now, anyway. We worked it out.

By the time I got home last evening, the treacherous rail-less deck was gone. The space is now the southwest corner of our enlarged kitchen. If you look closely at the following pic, you can make out, just to the right of the big square window, the framing for the door that will lead to the new deck and the two corner windows above where the sink will go. All those dangly bits represent plumbing and electrical wiring, most of which will have to be relocated:

Here's what it looks like from the outside:

The other major change in my absence was that the pantry had been framed out to support the extended kitchen floor, eliminating the annoying step down to that area. Note the entombment of the old linoleum, which had lined the bottom of the pantry as well; we've left something for future remodelers to discover. To the left (below) is the base of the old pantry. To the right, the new framing. Beyond that, a sheer drop to the garage floor:

Going from living room to basement kitchen and back, last night and this morning, with occasional forays into the garage: not fun. But the inconvenience was short-lived. By this afternoon (yes, Sunday), the floor was level out through the pantry area:

And we had stairs again, of sorts:

The entire staircase to the basement will have to be rebuilt, and that's going to be a mess, since it'll impinge on our temporary setup downstairs. But that's a few days off. For now, it's navigable, though that first step is a doozy:

Kitchen Remodel: Daze 1 and 1.5

2011-08-23T15:39:00.000-07:00

Living without a kitchen for several weeks will be challenging. But preparing for the experience has been friggin' exhausting. Let's hear it for ripe tomatoes.

After clearing out and storing all our non-essential paraphernalia -- why do we own so much stuff? -- I turned my awesome organizational skills toward setting up the field kitchen downstairs. The main expanse is normally my studio work table. Before I retired, it functioned as my office desk, easily accomodating a computer, printer, and flatbed scanner, with plenty of room left over. Now the microwave, toaster and toaster oven are at one end, the cutting board and general prep area at the other. Desk, you have served us well.

Elsewhere in the finished basement, we set up a breakfast cart, bar, and -- in a corner that's always been underutilized -- a gracious dining room:

Upstairs, in our so-called dressing room -- which doubles as a cat-art gallery and triples as my yoga space -- we established the animal feeding and treat station. Their accustomed bowls are arrayed around the perimeter of the room. In the morning the cats come in and stretch with me.

The official start of the job was marked by the arrival, mid-yesterday, of the dumpster and porta-potty:

Steve spent several hours digging through heavy clay to prepare the foundation for the new deck supports. China Rose conducted the pre-inspection:

I'm hoping my Marathon conifer, which is now over six feet tall, survives the framing and other outside work. Perhaps my festive pink ribbon will protect it:

As soon as Steve's truck pulled into the driveway this morning, Jerry and I began unloading the refrigerator. Steve and a helper then carried it to the garage, where it'll live for the duration. (That's the dishwasher, which we'll reinstall, behind it in the photo). I carted essential foodstuffs -- I love that word -- to the smaller fridge that lives downstairs, conveniently adjacent to our temporary kitchen, and shlepped items we probably won't be using for a while -- pancake syrup, whole wheat flour, exotic seeds and grains -- to the one in the garage. This sort of logistical triage is every bit as tiring as the multiple trips up and down stairs.

So much for prep; on to the remodel itself. How's that going? Well before noon, the old cabinets and some other fixtures were in the garage, awaiting pickup by the Rebuilding Center.

I forgot to post a "before" picture earlier of the beam that runs east-west through the kitchen, a remnant of an earlier remodel. The original owners of our house sacrificed a portion of their kitchen deck -- sort of similar to what we're doing -- and bumped out to create a dining area. The beam will go, and the ceiling will be raised to match the height of the rest of the room. This alteration, which we wouldn't have imagined was possible -- and thanks to Jack Barnes, our architect, for pointing out the potential -- is going to make a huge difference.

Note the darker yellow paint splotches on the wall. It would never have occured to me to paint the kitchen yellow -- I'm a blue-green person and still somewhat averse to red and orange in my personal environment -- but the people we bought the house from thought differently. Combined with the bright green floor, it made me smile every time I walked into the room, especially during our grim, gray winters. So we're sticking with yellow walls, though a darker shade to harmonize better with the new floor, cabinet and countertop colors.

Jer and I snuck into the construction zone while the guys were on lunch break. We're already down to the walls. The first photo was the stove area, the second one the sink. Amazing.

Here We Go Again

2011-08-19T17:11:00.000-07:00

We're all getting over Rachel's death, including Max and Shelly, who've resumed laying on a regular basis. I've started letting them free-range in the back yard, under close supervision. Amazingly, both cats and dog are supremely nonchalant in the presence of the uncaged hens. Maybe they're just biding their time, though I doubt it; Stella Luna seems a little cowed, if anything, and I've seen Shelly deliver a sharp, admonitory peck 'longside Sophie's head when the pup seemed way too interested in sniffing chicken butt.

We'll probably add to the flock at some point, but right now, we're preoccupied with our impending kitchen remodel. This will be a big one. We've done several other home improvement projects since moving here six years ago, and in Berkeley we added an entire storey to our house. But this is the first time our kitchen will be totally offline for several weeks.

The plan is to expand to the southwest, sacrificing the existing small deck off the kitchen, and building a replacement just to the east, under the big square south-facing window. In this view from the back yard, the deck is to the left, in shadow:

The sink will move to that southwest corner. New cabinets, quartz countertop and Marmoleum (tm) flooring. New fridge, too, though we're keeping most of the other appliances. They're not that old, they work well, and why add to the landfill?

We're also planning to eliminate the step down to the existing pantry at the top of the basement stairs, and to expand that area slightly, taking over part of the garage. This will involve rebuilding the stairs, but we think it'll be worth the additional expense and inconvenience. The photos show the current pantry (note the lovely grain on that plywood door) and the area of the garage that will be affected:

A couple of major design considerations have been the bulky old Hoosier cabinet -- our baking center, which I love -- and the hanging pot rack, which can't go just anywhere. We think we've found good solutions for both. (The painting in the pic below is a recent birthday gift; it's by a New Mexico artist and friend named Mary Carter.)

Our prep got underway a couple of weeks ago and has focused on two main fronts: Clearing stuff out of the impact zones -- the south end of the garage, the cabinets under the stairs, and of course the kitchen itself -- and setting up a field kitchen in the basement, using Jerry's workbench, my big studio desk, and a six-foot folding table in the guest room, for cookware, appliances, and foodstuffs, respectively.

We already have a small refrigerator downstairs, and the main one will move to the garage for the duration, to be replaced toward the end of the project. This morning we moved four large containers of tomato plants from the driveway, on which contractor trucks will have dibs, to the walkway. This is looking to be a not-bad year for tomatoes, but that's another blog post...

At this point the space is pretty well stripped:

Kitchenware is piled in and on every available out-of-the-way nook and surface, especially in the guest room. Sorry, Casa Jereva is undergoing renovation and is not accepting bookings til October:

We're down to the very basics -- food and utensils for breakfast, lunch, and a couple more catchall dinners upstairs, plus Jerry's margarita makings and my coffee setup.

The project begins Monday morning with some outside concrete work; the kitchen itself won't be breached until Tuesday. But by then we'll be cleared out and ready to roll, logistically if not emotionally.

Speaking of which, we haven't yet told the cats. But their environment has been shifting slowly, day by day, so they surely know something's up. Here are a few more pix from shortly before their lives were thrown into chaos:

Sad times in Chickenland

2011-07-28T10:04:00.000-07:00

Rachel died a week ago this morning.

I'd taken her in for a second cortisone shot, hoping for a miracle cure like the first time. It made no difference. She got weaker and weaker and finally stopped eating and drinking. I had a long conversation with the vet last Tuesday evening, having already made an appointment to bring her for an evaluation on Thursday. But she declined sharply after that, only changing position a couple of times during the day, and falling on her side when she tried to walk.

When I opened the run a little after 8 Thursday morning, she was still breathing, but that was about it. When I went back to fetch her around 9:30 for the trip to the vet, she was stiff, though with terminal paralysis or rigor mortis I couldn't quite tell; I thought maybe I heard a heartbeat. We took her in anyway, and one of the techs confirmed death. As I'd anticipated from our earlier conversations, the vet wanted to do a necropsy to see if it was Marek's disease (which is so common that chicks are routinely vaccinated against it at 1 day of age) or something more exotic. I wanted to know, too.

The doc called back a couple of days later and left a detailed report on my voicemail. Not Marek's, which I guess is the good news. The cause of her presenting symptoms? Inconclusive. We're left with the original diagnosis of some neurological weirdness; maybe she'd had a stroke at some point. But the immediate cause of death was a massive fungal (aspergillus) infection of the right lung, possibly caused by aspirating food. I'm struggling with the realization that my tube-feeding back in May, when her neck was so terribly contorted that she couldn't eat on her own, might have killed her.

Rachel and her flockmates were tightly bonded. The other two, usually reliable layers, slowed way down during Rachel's final illness. They haven't laid an egg since she's been gone. Now, of course, I'm worried about them. They look fine, and I'm hoping they're just sitting shiva, in their poultryesque fashion, for Ray.

This is not what I signed up for when I got chickens. I didn't want to start with baby chicks because of the mortality factor; at 64 I have enough of that to deal with in my human life. I tried so hard to keep my hens safe and happy without being overly obsessive. But right now I feel like I'm living out some kind of Chickenland worst-case scenario. Of course I'm thinking about adding to the flock, but not til I find out what's going on with Max and Shelly. Would new playmates cheer them up, or stress them out further?

Two and a Half Hens

2011-07-11T14:39:00.000-07:00

It's been a roller-coaster ride in Chickenland.

One afternoon at the end of April, Rachel suddenly starting limping. She walked with her left leg held straight out, like a marching soldier. I assumed she'd injured herself and watched her for a couple of weeks, hoping it would improve on its own. Finally I took her to the chicken vet, who prescribed a course of Celebrex. No change.

At that point almost a month had passed. Just before Memorial Day weekend, Rachel got dramatically worse. Her neck contracted to the point where she couldn't eat or drink on her own. Her entire body skewed to one side. Off-balance, she could barely walk. I called the vet and got the first available appointment, on Monday. They'd be open despite the holiday. That evening I found Ray at the bottom of the henhouse ladder, on her side. My heart sank. She couldn't navigate the steps. I lifted her up, carried her down the next morning, and, for three days, syringed as much water and liquid nourishment down her throat as I could. Pilling a chicken, hydrating a chicken: two new skills to add to my resume.

Memorial Day morning I took her to the vet. Rachel was in terrible shape. In the exam room she could hardly stand upright. The doc didn't hold out much hope. She told me that it was probably something neurological, and that chickens -- along with migratory waterfowl, interestingly enough -- have really weird nervous systems. Psittacines (the parrot family) are normal by comparison. All she had to offer was a cortisone shot. We took it. Rather, Rachel took it -- right in the white meat, my sick mind pointed out.

24 hours later, she was walking again. Her neck unkinked. The limp diminished and eventually disappeared. She ate, enthusiastically. The vet had cautioned me that cortisone was a temporary fix at best; its effect might last a week. That was a little over a month ago. I started thinking of Ray as our special needs chicken. Sad, because she had been my most adventurous, inquisitive girl. But still, she was an active part of our flock of three despite her diminished capabilities. The video shows her, the dark brown bird, going at the greens with gusto, and even getting in an alpha-girl peck on Max.

A few days ago I noticed that Rachel's left wing was drooping, to the point where the long flight feathers dragged between her legs, sometimes getting in the way when she walked. This morning, she wasn't pacing the coop floor with Maxine and Shelly, waiting to be let out into the run. She was still in the nest box, but scrambled out when I arrived and stood hesitantly in the doorway, measuring the distance to the ground. I lifted her down and saw that her left eye was closed. Not blinking, but shut tight. Another sign of neurological damage, I'm guessing. So now I have a one-eyed chicken. What will happen next?

To those of you with human children, I apologize: But this weighs on me as I imagine your kids' illnesses and hardships weigh on you. In the days immediately after her injury, Rachel laid the two eggs she already had in the chute; there've been no more since then. But eggs are not the issue. I've taken responsibility for these animals. I can't regard them as livestock, the way a farmer would. Once I named them, they entered the realm of pets.

Look What the Cat Dragged in, Phase III

2011-01-31T13:14:00.000-08:00

Several years ago I documented our cat Stella Luna’s odd obsession with bringing wads of dried grass into the house and depositing them in various locations. Later, her interest morphed into transferring gloves, hats and socks we kept in a basket by the door to other parts of the house.

In the last few years, she’s pretty much limited her artistic efforts to a carefully placed toy mouse or catnip pillow, announcing each installation with a forceful yowl. This activity invariably takes place shortly after her staff has gone to bed for the night. We drift off to sleep mildly curious to see what awaits us in the morning.

As she did earlier in her artistic career, Stella’s now exploring another new medium. She’s been working with fabric lately, using scraps and strips from my work table to articulate her own creative vision. Frankly I don’t think it’s as strong as her earlier work, but at least somebody in this family is putting in studio time.

Bag Lady

2010-12-29T14:20:00.000-08:00

Ages ago, when she heard I’d gotten into quilting, a friend in DC sent me a couple of dozen Marimekko fabric samples. They’ve been maturing in my stash until two or three months ago when I decided to make little purses from them. Most of the swatches measure about 8 x 9 inches which, trimmed and sewn, is just the right size for a bag to hold the walkabout essentials: cell phone, reading glasses, house key, kleenex and, for dog owners, a plastic bag or two. I have tons of commercial printed fabric for lining, and a vast collection of ribbons for shoulder straps, plus my grandmother’s button tin and random embellishments I’ve accumulated over the years. It’s time to use some of this stuff up!

Since the Marimekko samples are one of a kind, the front and back of each purse is different, which I guess makes them reversible. It’s fun playing mix-and-match, pulling out yardage I’d once considered star-quality quilting material to use as lining, inventing loops and closures, maybe adding a flap or pocket when I find a scrap that works.

I’m quilting each bag, just a bit, with perle cotton, to keep the layers together. Some of the samples included tiny patches showing additional colorways; I’ve left those on. The overall effect is funky, but functional (hey, there’s a marketing slogan). Each purse is slightly better constructed than the last, and takes less time to put together, since I’ve figured out the basics. The first one (below), which doesn’t have batting, I’m calling “summer-weight.” The others are all padded.

This one (below) is lined and trimmed with a plaid cotton that used to be one of my favorite skirts. I still like the muted purples, browns and grays. The closure incorporates the buttonholes from the original waistband. I love this kind of recycling.

I feel like I could crank these out indefinitely while half-watching TV or listening to podcasts, but I’ll probably stop once I’ve exhausted the Marimekko stash and move on to something equally exciting in another realm. The downstairs sofa is calling out for pillows.

It’s an... egg! No, it’s TWINS!!

2010-11-08T16:20:00.000-08:00

I found two eggs in the nest box yesterday, two months to the day after we got our chickens. The farmer told us the girls were four to five months old at point of sale, which meant they were on the verge of starting to lay. For the last few weeks I’ve tried not to obsess about when, or to worry about all the possible weirdnesses -- shell-lessness or other malformations -- that occasionally happen with novice layers. This is probably the small-scale chicken keeper’s equivalent of counting your newborn's fingers and toes and hoping their chromosomes are okay.

But these eggs were perfect. Of course I immediately cackled all over Facebook and The WELL, and someone asked if we were going to eat them. No, I said, we’re going to bronze them, like baby shoes, duh.

Jerry had his egg sunny-side-up this morning, with a commercial egg alongside for comparison. The homegrown one (on the left in the pic), aside from being smaller as pullet eggs typically are, had a much perkier yolk, and the area of the white immediate surrounding it was visibly firmer than the outlying portion. This is normal, and you can sometimes see it in commercial eggs, if they’re fresh enough.

I don’t generally enjoy runny yolks, so I cooked mine in the shell, starting in cold water and timing it for three minutes after it came up to a simmer. Peeling the egg without breaking it was a challenge, but the consistency was exactly what I wanted. I smeared it on a slice of toasted Dave’s Killer mega-grain bread and added a grinding of pepper and a sprinkle of kosher salt. It was possibly the best egg I’ve ever tasted. Thank you, chickens.

More specifically, thank you Maxine and, possibly, Rachel. Maxine is a Barred Rock and Rachel a Partridge Rock. Though they don’t look at all alike, they’re considered variants of the same breed. Finding two eggs in the nest box yesterday, I assumed for no particular reason that the Rocks had synchronized their cycles. (Michelle, the third chicken, is a different breed, a blue-laced Wyandotte.)

This morning, though, I surprised Maxine on the nest. The other two were standing nearby, kibitzing, just like when you go to the ladies room with your girlfriends. I excused myself while she completed her business: another lovely egg, identical to the earlier two. So now I’m thinking that Maxine, whose comb and wattles are notably larger and redder (an indication of maturity), might be the only layer so far. Conceivably I’d managed to overlook her debut offering on Sunday, which would account for Monday’s double surprise.

I’d actually almost resigned myself to not seeing eggs til spring. Egg production is highly dependent on the amount of light chickens receive, and in these days of dwindling sunshine, it’s not uncommon for laying hens to slack off or even stop entirely, and for pullets to postpone the whole affair. After researching the pros and cons of adding a few hours of supplemental lighting during the darker months, we decided a couple of weeks ago to install a light on a timer. It comes on at 3 AM and goes off at 8, after the sun has risen. (That was one more clock we had to remember to turn back last weekend.) Perhaps it made a difference.

Or maybe the dummy eggs had something to do with it. Some chicken keepers put a fake egg (a plastic Hanes pantyhose shell or even a golf ball will do) in the nest box, to show their pullets what’s expected of them, and where. It’s a fairly common practice, I gather, though the chickens usually manage to figure it out on their own. Last Saturday, on a whim, I removed the “demos" -- a pair of quite pretty Mexican onyx eggs I’ve owned for years -- that I had optimistically placed, one in each nest box, shortly after the chooks arrived. By Monday we had our first eggs.

I was surprisingly verklempt when I opened the yolk-yellow egg door and found two actual eggs, well, nestled there. The phrase “today you are a woman,” sprang to my warped mind. I’m still kvelling for Michelle (and maybe Rachel), and I have no idea why Yiddish words seem most apt to describe my feelings. Perhaps egg-laying brings out my grandmotherly instincts. If so, I don’t what to think about what eating them implies.

New chix on the block

2010-09-10T11:26:00.000-07:00

I hadn't quite pictured acquiring my chickens this way, hanging out in the Trader Joe's parking lot at 7:30 AM, waiting for the farmer's wife to show up. Another woman was sitting in her car, too; I sidled over and verified that she was there for a transaction similar to ours. Apart from the schmoozing about coops and breeds, it felt like we were parties to a drug deal.

We'd been instructed to look for a dark-green Buick sedan, and to bring a crate and cash. Ms. Farmer slid smoothly into the space between our vehicles. I checked the girls over with an unpracticed eye as we shuffled them from her pet carrier to ours. A barred rock, a partridge rock, a blue-laced red Wyandotte. Young birds, pullets, on the verge of starting to lay. Yup, that was our order, all right. I caught myself expecting meowing from the carrier on the short ride home. I wonder if the poultry smell will linger to drive the cats wild on their next trip to the vet.

Here are the barred rock and the blue-laced red Wyandotte. The latter is a pretty fancy breed, though reputed to be as good a layer as the more common rocks.

I'd been negotiating with the farmer, who goes by the nickname Cooper, for several days about varieties and delivery options. There was a chance they'd arrive over the holiday weekend, so I quickly finished painting the coop and went to Naomi's for a galvanized feeder and waterer. They're such simple, pleasing, farm-y looking devices; the design probably hasn't changed in decades. Jerry picked up a couple of carabiners -- apparently raccoon R&D hasn't yet figured these out -- to secure the nest box and human access doors.

Here's the finished coop, shortly before occupancy. The area behind the blue door and under the solid box is open but fenced with hardware cloth. The ladder on the left leads up to the enclosed roost. The yellow door is for access to the nest box (and eggs!) from the outside. There's another, slightly larger door, on the right-side wall, inside the enclosure. That one is for cleaning and replacing bedding material. The theory is that the chickens will climb the ladder and roost inside at night. So far they haven't gotten the idea, though a combination of coaching and cooler weather will probably help.

My uncle Sol is probably rotating in his grave, but of course we had to name our chickens. We seem to have settled on Maxine for the black-and-white barred rock, Michelle (as in Obama) for the bellissima textured Wyandotte, and Rachel (as in Maddow) for the chestnut-colored partridge rock. Though the nuances of their individual personalities have yet to reveal themselves, Max has roosted, the last two nights, on the perch we installed in a corner of the run, with the other two snuggled on the straw bale underneath. So I'm calling her marginally more dominant for now. I could be entirely wrong. What do I know about chickens?

Hens and Chicks

2010-08-28T21:55:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, I spent part of several summers at my uncle and aunt's chicken farm in Vineland, New Jersey. I helped feed and water the chickens. I collected the eggs, sometimes from under the bellies of the recalcitrant hens, placing them gently, one by one, in the enameled wire basket. I learned to work the simple but ingenious machine that candled the eggs -- shining a light through them to inspect for blood spots, embryos, and multiple yolks -- then chugged them along on a tiny conveyor that gently tipped each one into the appropriate chute, sorted by size and weight. On at least one occasion, I accompanied Uncle Sol on a trip to the slaughterhouse. Aunt Hansi was a fabulous cook and baker; most of the double yolks went into her cakes.

Though I loved going about my chores in their dusty midst, the chickens themselves seemed to me, for the most part, an undifferentiated white clucking mass, sometimes somnolent, sometimes excited. My vacation reading at the farm one summer was a thick, profusely illustrated manual of poultry diseases. I was particularly fascinated by the color plates of Newcastle Disease. I intended to be a doctor at that point, so the interest was professional.

Years passed. In the early '90s my friend Mary Carter wrote a charming series of essays about her small flock in Marin County. The "Chicken Lady" writings are archived as part of The Best of the WELL, and available to members of that pioneering online community (www.well.com). Chickens came in colors, I discovered; some breeds were temperamental in one direction or another; individual birds might have personalities as unique as humans.

Mary was a forerunner of the urban poultry movement. Now, at least here in Portland, it's a chicken on every plot. Actually, we're allowed three hens (more with a permit), though roosters are forbidden within city limits. Our back-fence neighbors have constructed what they refer to as a chicken Taj Majal; neighbors two doors up have a coop; a couple of houses up from them there's another. I hear telltale clucks from yards throughout the neighborhood whenever I take a walk.

Two years ago, my friend Jackie gifted me with the charming couple at the top of this page. They've been living in the southeast corner of the backyard, exactly where the coop is going now. I thought of them as mere garden ornaments, but it's clear that they've been placeholders all along.

Here's a shot of the coop in progress. I bought the plans from theGardenCoop.com and Mike, our builder, modified the design to fit our somewhat-constrained space.

The most labor-intensive part of the job was trenching the base around the perimeter, avoiding damage to major tree roots in the process. The bottom edge of the hardware cloth -- a sturdier, finer mesh than so-called "chicken wire" -- that covers the coop will be buried several inches, as a barrier to burrowing predators.

When the coop's completed, I'll do some exterior painting, cueing off the colors I used on this old and extremely tall wooden ladder I found a couple weeks ago, which I plan to place picturesquely... somewhere. After that we'll turn to the serious matter of acquiring chicks, pullets or full-grown laying hens. What and when depend on timing and availability. I'll keep you posted.

The giant ladder is currently sharing deck space with several container gardens I potted up last week, following a trip to Xera Plants, a remarkable local nursery that's generally wholesale-only. (Hardy Plant Society members got a special tour plus discount shopping opportunity; that alone is worth the price of membership.) Most of the plants I bought are succulents, a broad and fascinating family. One of the best-known species is sempervivum, which typically grows as a central rosette surrounded by smaller offshoots. Its common name is hens and chicks.

Dating myself

2010-07-16T16:58:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I indulged in what my friend June termed an art date with myself. R. Crumb's Genesis drawings are on display at the Art Museum, and I wanted to hear what chief curator Bruce Guenther had to say about this icon of my misspent youth. He lectured for an hour, engagingly, before turning us loose in the exhibit. A little over a year ago, The New Yorker published an excerpt of Crumb's work; I happened to lay my iPhone on the opening page, floating in God's void.

Crumb spent five years researching and illustrating all 50 chapters of Genesis. Granted, a Bible chapter is, what, a few paragraphs at most? -- it was still a lot of material to absorb. I'd figured I'd cruise through and look at the drawings, maybe read a bit of the text when something caught my interest. But damned if the story didn't suck me in, even the begats, over and over again. Genesis is juicy material, and Crumb, (Mr.) naturally, illustrated some of the begettings. Of course, the book was for sale in the museum gift shop, but I didn't want to schlep it all over town and on public transportation (I'd taken the bus in). It is a must-purchase, though. My birthday's coming up; just saying.

A wall-size Sol LeWitt piece was in the final stages of installation in the main-floor sculpture gallery. It consists of six primary geometic shapes superimposed on each other in pairs, white on a black ground, in all possible permutations. Very simple, but it grabbed me in a cool, rational, satisfying way. What a totally different aesthetic, and intent, from R. Crumb.

As long as I was going to be downtown anyway, I'd made a Genius Bar appointment to have my iPhone, which has been hiccuping since I "upgraded" to OS4, diagnosed. I had a couple of hours to fill before then, and I was hungry (must have been all that begetting). Southpark, one of our favorite default downtown restaurants, is just down the street from the museum. It was a gorgeous day, and they had tables set up on the sidewalk. So I ordered lunch and spent an hour or so eating a tuna salad sandwich and reading the book I'd brought with me.

A California friend had emailed me about a local gallery show featuring the work of two artists she knew, so I walked down 9th, across Burnside, and a few more blocks to the venue. En route I saw this conceptual art installation. Only in Portland, I hope.
With a couple of exceptions, the paintings (small format watercolor abstracts) didn't engage me. The gallery next door, though -- this is in the Pearl District, which is art-scene central -- had an intriguing exhibit centered on the graphic representation of editing, literary analysis, cultural history, and classroom teaching. Highly conceptual, hard to explain, but it spoke to my English major/editor heart. Here's a link: pdxcontemporaryart.com/anna-gray-ryan-wilson-paulsen.

I still had some time before the rendezvous with my Genius, so I dropped into the Contemporary Craft Museum, where I've been a member since shortly after we moved to town. There's usually something intriguing on display. The current exhibit hadn't piqued my interest when I read about it in their newsletter, but in person it was provocative. The title of the show is Dropping the Urn; the artist, from Beijing, is Ai Weiwei (I'm trying to put out of my mind the declarative English sentence that sounds like). He takes centuries-old vases and urns and repaints them, or reproduces their form but with the decorative glaze on the inside, as if they'd been turned inside out, or -- literally iconoclastic -- drops and breaks them. Here's a writeup: www.museumofcontemporarycraft.org/exhibitions/index.php?f=2010_07_weiwei

Finally it was time to hit the Apple Store. I pawed iPads for a short while, and then handed my phone over to Kid Genius. He ran some diagnostics which revealed very little. His advice was to sync the phone (which also does a backup), then do a full reset, which wipes all data and restores the phone to virginity, and then sync to reinstall my data. This is not as scary as it sounds, but I was hoping to avoid having to fiddle with all my settings again; I'd done a Reset without Erase earlier. Of course, today Apple released version 4.0.1 of the software, which might have helped with my problems. "Minor bug fixes" indeed. We'll see.

I left the A-store, resisted checking out the sale at Chico's across the way, and was rewarded, up on the transit mall, with the almost immediate appearance of the 19 bus.

I really should take myself on art dates more often.

Happy Birthday, Sophie

2010-07-02T15:16:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe that it's been a year since this little critter attached herself to us while we out walking. She was dirty, disheveled and limping -- not at all like she is in this photo, fresh from a birthday bath. The beginning of the saga is here.

We knew almost nothing about living with dogs, and even less about integrating them into a household ruled by cats. We had no idea how old she was, or even what breed. Her record at the vet, last time I checked, still said "cockapoo mix."

Once we decided to keep her, we declared July 2nd, the day we found her, her birthday. After several months of waffling on the breed question by saying "We dunno; we think she's a Lhasa Apso or maybe a Shih Tzu mix," we sprang for a doggie DNA test. She's almost purebred Lhasa with a touch of Pekinese; the Peke part explains why she's on the small side for a Lhasa, and accounts for all her bad qualities, which are few.

Of course we've grown to love her. The cats would probably choose a somewhat less effusive verb, but still. The video features China Rose, who was so spooked when Sophie joined the family that she hid in the laundry sink for two weeks.

Flipping the mattress: Not a euphemism for anything

2010-06-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

I don't think this is what they mean by Sleep Number Mattress (tm), but it's the key to an important ritual in our household. Longer ago than I can remember, the engineer in the family numbered the 4 short edges of our mattress -- head and foot, top and bottom -- consecutively. Every quarter, on the solstice or equinox, we turn and/or flip the mattress so the next number is at the head. When 4's up, we return to 1, and so on ad infinitum. The object of this exercise: even wear, longer life. For the mattress, anyway. Thrilling, I know, but it's one of the quirky little dances we do. I'm sure you have yours. Happy summer.

Thinking Outside the (Vegetable) Bed

2010-05-18T13:54:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the towering Port Orford cedar in the southeast corner of our lot, and the mature pink chestnut that dominates the west side, our back yard has grown noticeably shadier in the five years we've lived here. Any given spot in the narrow herb and veggie bed along the south side of the house receives no more than a couple of hours of direct sunlight a day. The yellow climbing rose in the middle of that space is flourishing; it's as tall as the eaves this season, and casts its own shadow on the garden below.

The herbs, most of which are perennials, do fine here. We have more sage and oregano, especially, than we can use. This year I direct-sowed cool weather crops -- lettuces, spinach, beets and snap peas -- from seed in mid-March, and again in early May. I got poor germination from everything but the peas and, so far, very slow growth. It's been a cold, late spring. I'll go back to starts (a.k.a. plantlets) next year, or bite the bullet and find the room/rig up the lighting to start my seeds indoors. I've done it before; I've just gotten lazy (and space has gotten tighter) in recent years.

Given its iffy exposure, it's amazing that I even attempted to grow tomatoes in our backyard. The first year, I had beginner's luck with Brandywines and a couple of other heirlooms. Since then, I've had lackluster results, except from the cherry-type varieties. In retrospect, I realized that my veggie patch has grown progressively more shady over the years; do you think there might be a correlation?

Meanwhile, out front, the sweet gums on our parking strip dropped a few large limbs in various winter storms. Apart from the hassle of having to Deal With It, these losses were not unwelcome. They meant not only less raking, but more sun on the front garden. Last winter also vanquished several large ornamentals, opening up plantable real estate here and there. In early spring I watched the progress of light and shade across the garden, and realized: the tomatoes go in front this year. That's where the sun is; duh. Sometimes I'm a slow learner.

So here's what I'm trying for Tomato Season 2010: The huge black pot in the driveway contains three cherry-types: Sweet Million, Oregon Cherry, and Sun Gold. At this point the tomato cages look delusionally optimistic. The pot itself once housed a camellia that graced the back patio when we bought the house in 2005. I think it was placed there by the sellers to hide a crack in the cement. After we moved in, I transplanted the camellia to the west end of the yard, where it seems happy next to my Marathon Conifer, and stashed the empty pot next to the compost bin. (Sometimes it pays to hang onto stuff.) The pot should be adequate, I'm thinking, for three healthy, mature tomato plants. I set it on a wheeled stand (guaranteed to hold up to 500 pounds) so I can move it around, if necessary, to maximize solar exposure. At this point in the season, the driveway is sunny all day.

On impulse, I bought an EarthBox (tm) on my most recent nursery shopping frenzy. I'm sort of embarrassed about this. It's an expensive piece of plastic, albeit sturdy and well-made. It comes with bags of soil amendments, a watering and drainage system, and an elastic-edged rectangle of black plastic mulch that stretches over the top of the bin like a fitted bedsheet. Just add dirt, seedlings and water, and stand back for explosive growth. We'll see. It's on wheelies, too, in case I need to move it. On the far end, above, is a Siletz tomato, on the near side, a Stupice. Both are reputed to do well in the Willamette Valley. The latter looks a little peaked, though it is already bearing (a) fruit and might just be stressed by the rigors of early pregnancy.

I bought all five plants I've mentioned as seedlings from Territorial Seed Company, which has a fine reputation for breeding and selling varieties that do well in the Northwest. They were spendy ($5 and change each, once you factor in shipping); for the price, I was hoping they'd be larger. If they do well I'll hunt around at local nurseries and buy them in person next year.

I plunked a second Sun Gold, purchased at a neighborhood plant sale ($2 for a seedling already almost a foot tall), directly into the garden. We'll see how it does relative to the one in the big black container. A few feet to the east of that, I found room for another, smaller pot. This one (above) is a Black Krim, Russian in heritage and reputed to do well in our relatively short growing season.

A couple of weeks ago I started zucchini and yellow summer squash seeds (also from Territorial) inside, in the dressing-room garden window. They look vigorous and eager to get growin'. My plan is to colonize some of the bare spots in the front garden left vacant by my deceased euphorbia, kniphofia, ornamental grasses and the few not-hardy-enough phormiums that survived the snows of '08-'09 but succumbed to this past December's dry, windy arctic chill. Maybe I'll plant some squash among the irises on the west side of the house, which gets some afternoon sun. I'll have enough seedlings left, I'm sure, to plunk a few in the so-called veggie bed in my ever-more-challenging backyard.

Disquieted

2010-05-06T15:10:00.001-07:00

Berry Botanic Garden is on the endangered list. I’d been wanting to go, and when a visiting friend asked about it, seized the opportunity. We went this morning and saw dozens of new-to-me plants, including the exquisite Agapetes serpens from the Himalayas (above) and a kiwi relative (below) called Actinidia kolomikta, which appeared to be suffering from a beguilingly lovely fungal blight, but is actually healthy and normal.

I’m nowhere near knowledgeable enough to qualify as a plant geek. You think I knew these names? Any civilized garden -- and Berry is certainly that -- like any civilized social gathering, offers name tags to its guests.

My friend and her husband are staying downtown, in the Park Blocks, and I asked her to drop me off there so I could check out the current exhibit at the Portland Art Museum. The show is called Disquieted, and it lives up to its name: skewed, often creepy, images involving the human body. This highly detailed and realistic sculpture of a boy, for instance, by Ron Mueck. For scale, the mirror behind him, which is part of the piece, is about 18” tall. It’s like some freakish taxidermy, and yet so realistic that you half expect him to turn his head and start talking. Deeply disturbing, yet I couldn’t turn away. It reminded me of that plastinated cadaver exhibit that toured a couple of years ago, only without the flaying.

The show was interesting, though off-balancing and ultimately kind of depressing. I knew I’d find a welcome counterpoint downstairs, in the permanent Asian collection. I spent a few minutes with Quanyin, strolled through the hall of Buddhas, and headed for the bus, quieted.

Reinhabiting

2010-04-29T13:06:00.000-07:00

The glass shower door was installed on Tuesday. Take a good look; it’ll never be this clean again.

The double towel rack we ordered arrived yesterday and Jerry mounted that. He also did a neat job of encasing the cord for our electric toothbrush -- another small, why-didn’t-we-do-this-years-ago? adjustment.

Our towels are hanging, there’s a new rug on the floor. The skinny cabinet is loaded with our toiletries and sundries (there’s a word you don’t hear much anymore).

On the one hand it’s slightly depressing to clutter this pristine space with our funky old stuff; on the other, it’s fun to organize, shake things up, view objects in a different light.

Moving into a re-built environment involves a process of adjustment: Oops, the door opens that way now. Oh right, the mirror’s over here. Band-Aids are on the middle shelf of the upper cabinet. One must now place one’s front paws in the sink to get a drink of water.

When we completed our big Berkeley remodel, Stewart Brand came to the addition-warming party and asked us a lot of questions. He was writing a book called How Buildings Learn, and was interested in the adaptations that structures make, over time, to meet the needs of their inhabitants. At that point all I could tell him was that we’d most likely never close the pocket door on the walk-in closet and probably shouldn’t have spec’d it. What we didn’t know at the time was that the new flight of stairs would become magnificent loge seating at singthings, the magical musical gatherings that we would eventually host.

I don’t expect any profound social opportunities to unfold from this simple bathroom remodel. But we’re already starting to think about the next project. That’ll involve knocking down walls and dramatically altering spaces. Who knows what might happen then?

Fairy Condos, Hobbit Houses and Troll Sheds

2010-04-26T11:58:00.000-07:00

We’re not the only ones involved in a construction project this spring. A developer named Emily just put up a condo complex for fairies on SE 36th Ave. It appears to be loaded with amenities. If you lived here, you’d be home by now.

Elsewhere in the ‘hood, a treehouse for hobbits appeared and, on the same lot, a funky troll shed sported a new coat of paint(s). This is infill housing I can live with.

The Hammered Glass Cannot Be Tempered

2010-04-23T20:08:00.000-07:00

We’re just about done with this project. The tile backsplash is set. We thought at first we’d go with a single color but I’m glad we decided to mix it up, loosely echoing the tilework in the shower. Steve did a good job of transitioning from the slight curve required to fit flush with the ledge at the back of the sink to a straight line along the top. He also cut the end tiles so they’d line up with the edges of the sink; extra work, but it looks much better that way.

The upper door of the skinny cabinet now has its patterned glass panel. I love the ripply effect, even empty. The pattern is called “Hammered.” We’d considered another called “Rain,” as well as the vertical ribbed type I associate with cabinets in old-fashioned drugstores and medical offices. Originally we wanted glass in the lower door as well, but code dictates that glass installed close to the floor must be tempered so it doesn’t shatter into a million lethal shards if you accidentally kick it or something. Steve checked to see whether the pattern we wanted was available in a tempered version. The answer appeared as an email subject line: "The hammered glass cannot be tempered.” That sentence seems to resonate like a poem or proverb.

The shower has been user-tested and found delightful. We’re using our old shower rod and curtain until the glass door arrives next week. We spec’ed this fixture largely on the basis of its sleek design and apparent functionality. One of the plumbing showrooms had a spray booth set up, with a dozen or so shower heads and an external control for each one, so you could observe the jets in action and get a general sense of how they worked. But that’s not the same as taking off your clothes and getting in. This one is adjustable in four different directions, not just the spray but the height and angle of the shower head. Everything works smoothly and the spray options are optimal. The shower head is Grohe, by the way, and the control is Delta. We wanted independent temperature and volume settings integrated in the same control; Delta seems to be one of the few companies that still makes them.

I love the look and feel of the faucet, also by Grohe. It goes beautifully with the sink. As with the shower, we went by appearance and manufacturer reputation but with no guarantee that it would actually function the way we wanted. China Rose finds the arrangement satisfactory, too. That, of course, was the goal of this entire project.

Since I took these photos, we’ve begun settling in. Jerry remounted the medicine cabinet, now painted to match the trim, and the small glass shelves on both sides. We sacrificed one of the six shelves to make room for a hand towel holder. He fixed the funky electrical outlet and replaced the decorative switchplate, the colors of which go perfectly with the tile. My job was to load and organize the new storage cabinet. Other incidentals, like the bath towel bar and a wall-mounted swiveling mirror, normal on one side and merciless 8x magnifier on the other, will go up shortly. None of this is very exciting, but I’ll put up a few more pix later.

Steve came by this morning to install the grab bar and hooks in the shower. We wrote him an even larger check than the last one, reserving just enough to cover the cost of the door. Funny; that was the first item we spec’d, and it’s the last to be installed.

Flushed with Success

2010-04-19T19:38:00.000-07:00

Saturday was our 28th wedding anniversary. We spent most of the day hanging out while the tile guy/floor guy installed the subfloor and then the Marmoleum flooring. It’s covered with protective paper at the moment, but I think the color will be fine. That evening we celebrated (marriage, not Marmoleum) with a lovely dinner at Iorio. Still adore you, Jer, after all these years. (Oh yeah; that’s a closeup of the recessed shampoo/soap shelf, above.)

Sunday was the warmest day of the year so far, with temps in the 70s. I’d committed to volunteering at the Hardy Plant Society spring sale, a huge event at the Expo Center. I spent three hours processing credit card payments: Swipe card, enter last four digits, enter amount, wait for approval, present merchant copy for signature, print customer copy, stamp register receipt “paid.” Lather, rinse, repeat. I got into the rhythm pretty quickly -- a good thing, since at times the traffic was non-stop. I hadn’t felt an adrenaline rush like that since my restaurant line-cooking days. Afterwards I connected with my friends Deb and Maureen, and got to relax with them for a while, snacking and schmoozing in the warm sun.

Early in my shift, I watched a customer proceeding toward the cash register in the midst of his forest of perennial picks; it looked like Birnam Wood creeping toward Dunsinane. His purchases added up to a mind-boggling $663.00. I will never again feel guilty about dropping a few dozen bucks at a nursery.

Some time later, I spotted a guy wearing a brown t-shirt that read “I take mine with cream, sugar, and the 2nd Amendment,” an obvious, if eye-rolling, reference to the recent Starbucks-gun rights controversy. I hadn’t been taking particular notice of the names on people’s credit cards, but I did on this one. It was Lars Larson, Portland’s home-grown equivalent of Rush Limbaugh. Ick.

We’re taking the prudent path and not talking politics with any of the tradesmen who’ve been swarming around our bathroom-to-be. This morning at 8 a crew of three arrived to install the custom cabinet next to the shower. We’re still waiting on the glass-fronted upper door, but the main structure is in (facing the toilet, above) and lookin’ good. Notice the magazine storage shelf midway; that was Jerry’s idea, which I fought at first but now concede is brilliant.

Steve had scheduled the plumber for noon. The cabinet guys were finished, cleaned up, and out the door at 11:57. The plumber is here as I type (a little after 2). We just heard the first flush from the new toilet. This is at least as exciting as the first robin of spring. (6:30 PM update: Followup user test flush: Successful)

So here’s the gorgeous designer (Philippe Starck via Duravit) sink. We did run into a glitch with the installation. Most pedestals, we learned today, are open in back so you can just slide them in around the fittings. This one? A hollow column, sealed most of the way up, with an opening too high to line up with the existing fittings. Solution? Either open the bathroom wall (argh) and re-plumb the piping by a few inches. Or, if you have nerves of steel, take your diamond-blade sword... I mean saw, and enlarge the opening on the back of the pedestal -- without, of course, shattering the custom-ordered item into a million pieces. Steve chose option #2, and succeeded. Whew.

Steve had hoped to set the tile for the backsplash this afternoon, but because of the sink issues, and the fact that the p-trap is still not tightly sealed, will hold off til tomorrow. Hopefully that and a few other incidentals will wrap up the active phase of this project.

It was a difficult day in some ways, especially for the plumber, who is experienced but new to this company, and wants to demonstrate his competence and unflappability. Sophie has great confidence in the outcome, and so do we.

Grout Expectations

2010-04-16T19:10:00.000-07:00

I first encountered groufitti in a bathroom stall at the main library on Berkeley campus. It consisted of dozens of bad puns involving the word grout, written on the grout in every direction. Groutesque. Alexander the Grout. The Groutful Dead. You get the idea.

First thing upon arriving this morning, Steve assured us that last evening’s bucket spill would not have damaged the drywall in the guest room ceiling. Alright then. He then negotiated Greg into working tomorrow to keep on schedule. The floor has to go in before the toilet and sink are installed; the plumber’s due back on Monday.

Last night after Greg had tidied up and departed, I noticed a minor glitch in the tile pattern. If you look at the picture featuring China Rose from yesterday, you might be able to discern, in the right corner, a sliver of dark blue tile on the third course up from the floor, and a sliver of lighter tile on the second course. Most of the pattern is random-esque, but I really wanted a dark-to-light thing going on at the borders. This morning Steve and I discussed the concept of wabi sabi. Greg reversed the colors. A small error presents a dilemma: Will it fade in your consciousness over time, or will it annoy you forever? I’m glad we fixed this while we had the opportunity.

Today Greg finished tiling, including the intricate cutting involved in lining the recessed soap-and-shampoo shelf. Grouting and polishing was the final touch. I’m glad we chose clear glass, rather than patterned, for the shower door. A: We want to see the tile. B: There’s enough pattern going on already.

So the tile guy will be back tomorrow -- yes, Saturday and, as it happens, our 28th wedding anniversary -- to lay the subfloor and then the Marmorette (tm), Armstrong’s version of Marmoleum (tm). It’s been so long since we chose the color; I hope it works with what we’ve got going now.

Tea for the Tiler Man

2010-04-15T17:08:00.000-07:00

I’m starting this post at 5 PM -- tea time -- because I couldn’t resist the pun, which fans of the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens will get. The tile guy is still here, mortaring the walls and talking to himself. The schedule calls for grouting tomorrow. The square hole in the wall (below) will be the recessed shelf for soap, shampoo, etcetera. Tiled on all surfaces, that’ll take a bit of what quilters call “fussy cutting."

The door guy showed up mid-afternoon to take final measurements for the glass door and panel that will form the front of the shower. At one point four of us plus one dog managed to fit in the bathroom. (I was going for five but Greg, the tile guy, demurred.)

Jer and I had originally spec’d a 20-inch-wide door, narrower than standard, thinking that would leave room on the (thus wider) stationary panel for a second towel rack. But Steve pointed out that we’d have to turn sideways to dodge the shower control. So we added four inches to the door width and will rethink the towel rack placement.

The glass will take a couple of weeks to fabricate, so we’ll be living with our old shower curtain and a temporary rod for a while. No biggie.

Two hours later, done for the day. There was a mishap involving a bucket of water, a stripped-bare subfloor and the guestroom directly below. Oops. But I’m happy with the tile pattern. It’s pretty much as I’d visualized it, solid borders gradually devolving into random floaty chaos. I can relate to that.

Forecast: A Shower

2010-04-14T20:38:00.000-07:00

Progress on the remodel this week has been undramatic but significant. The waterproof shower pan liner, which we tested overnight to verify that it is, indeed, watertight, went in Monday. Had it failed, we would have awakened to the telltale drip... drip in the guest room downstairs.

Yesterday the liner vanished under a layer of cement. Cement board went in on the walls as well. Cement board, I gather, is used instead of sheetrock in wet and to-be-tiled environments. Now we have a real sense of how large (i.e., small) the finished enclosure will be.

Today, the cement floor acquired a layer of 2x2 matte tile in four colors, which you’ll soon see echoed in 4x4 glossy on the walls. Designing a simple symmetrical tile pattern, I assumed that the drain would be smack in the middle of the shower floor, and of course it’s not. But that adds visual interest, don’tcha think?

There’s a cutout in the wall opposite the shower fixture where a recessed shelf will go. We spent a while today discussing with Greg, the tile guy, how to finesse the tile in and around that area. I have to be out of the house for a few hours tomorrow, and made the perfectly reasonable suggestion that he and Jerry text me with jpegs whenever decisions must be made.

Yesterday Steve rehung the bathroom door so it opens out, into the hall, rather than in, to the bathroom. The change was essential to avoid banging into the new shower door, but we should have done it years ago. Instead, we dodged that damn door every time we got into the tub, made bathroom rug choices based on what would clear the bottom of the door as it swung, and tried not to leave the door agape, with the toilet on display, when visitors were in the living room. It’s a relatively trivial fix, yet we lived with the low-grade annoyance for almost five years. Inertia is a powerful force.

Okay. The tile shower floor and ledge (where we get a preview of the glossy 4x4s) are mortared in. Tomorrow the walls. Then grout. That mere hint of color is promising. We’re entering “finish” mode now.

Speaking of color, as I skirted around the construction zone to put laundry away, the lilacs outside the dressing room window took me by surprise When did they burst into bloom?

A Person of (Limited) Color

2010-04-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

The remodel continues. The last few days have been undramatic: drywall, primer, first coat of paint. For the walls, we chose a very light green to tie in with the tilework you have yet to see.

A couple of years ago, after the garden window was installed in the bathroom, I painted the trim a medium-value greenish blue. Against the stark white tiles and semi-gloss walls, I thought the blue would make a Statement, but it didn’t have much to say. (It was a flash in the can.) Now that the walls are sporting -- however modestly -- some color of their own, the trim brings even less contrast.

There’s a fine line between subtle and boring; clearly I haven’t yet figured it out.

I love color but, when it comes to the house itself, I seem reluctant to commit. We just painted the medicine cabinet -- about the only legacy item that’s going back into the new bathroom -- the same color as the window trim. Determined not to repeat my failure of nerve regarding that trim, I advocated at first for a more assertive, contrast-y, shade. But Jer likes this soft green-blue. I can live with it. And, of course, we already had the paint.

I think the house itself is pulling us toward its preferred sector of the color wheel, which also happens to be mine. The first family to live here -- they owned the house for 40 years before selling it to the couple who sold it to us -- had a thing for blue-green. Notice how close in hue our newly-painted cabinet is to the built-in cupboard under the basement stairs.

The bathroom walls, once stripped of tile, revealed a bolder green than we would have selected. At the back of the kitchen cabinets, the original wall shows: blue. But the short-term owners from whom we bought the house painted the kitchen a bright yellow, and installed a pure green Marmoleum (tm) floor. I love that combination. It’s like green grass on a sunny day, an especially beguiling fantasy during our Pacific Northwest winters.

Although I’m not afraid of color, blue-green is my comfort zone. The very first quilt I made reveals that predilection. I’ve since learned to work outside that range, but it’s clearly where I want to live. And, apparently, bathe.

Turning the corner

2010-04-07T14:26:00.000-07:00

Though we layabouts didn't break a sweat, yesterday felt like a marathon day. Demo is done, construction is underway. The framing is essentially finished and the rough plumbing is in.

The new layout is already shaping up. The room feels so spacious; too bad we have to fill it up with sinks and toilets and stuff.

China Rose is inspecting (above) where the new pedestal sink will go (below). Don't the fittings look pensive, waiting?

As you can see from the photo below, the sink itself is on edge. Must be the anticipation. (Okay, time to stop anthropomorphizing bathroom fixtures.) Good thing we're down to one car so there's room to store things in the garage. Behind the ceramics, to the left of the file cabinet, you can glimpse the shower-floor tile, laid out more or less as we planned it. We modified the pattern slightly so the drain would fit within the solid area in the center. We'll see how that works out.

The cabinet guy was here yesterday, too, measuring for what certainly will be one of the skinniest storage closets in Portland. The blue masking tape marks the placement of an open shelf for reading materials. There'll be a patterned glass-front cabinet above that, and a wood-paneled cabinet below. We're hoping the cupboard will hold the contents of the old vanity cabinet plus the backup toilet paper supply that we now keep in the garage. It'll be two feet deep and almost as tall as the ceiling so, with careful planning, it should work. China Rose remains skeptical.

Here's another view of the same area from a different angle. You can see the framed-in box that will become a recessed shampoo-and-soap holder in the shower.

Speaking of showers, Stella Luna is wondering what happened to her personal water fountain.

China really wanted to get up on the window sill (below). She could easily jump to it from the toilet, when one existed. I think she wanted reassurance that the outside view, at least, was unchanged.

Whew, yes. Okay; it's still there.

Steve decided to go ahead and install the insulation right around the time that mere mortals would be quitting for the day. Had the sheetrocker been available today, we'd be a day ahead of schedule. (“Sheetrocker” sounds like a derogatory term: "You sheetrocker, you." Should I be saying "drywall specialist"?) As it is, we have a break until tomorrow. The cats are pussyfooting around, wondering why it's so quiet.

I like this archeological phase of remodeling, when the old layers are uncovered and artifacts of past settlers exposed. Terry commented along the same lines on my last post, adding "Don't you feel a little like family, with unknown people who lived in your house before you? I think living in a brand new house would be so boring."

I hadn't thought about it in those terms but, as I told her in email, the only brand-new house I ever lived in was our Sea Ranch one, and somehow I never bonded with it. It was a spec house, designed to appeal to as many potential buyers as possible. We hadn't designed it, and we had no emotional investment, going in. It was comfortable, and a pretty place to live -- lots of wood, big windows, a huge windowseat where I loved to hang out -- but the house itself felt characterless and generic. In the decade that we lived there, we put in a hot tub and replaced the cream-colored wall-to-wall carpeting with hardwood. There was not much more to do, no other family's design decisions to reverse, no real quirks or shortcomings to overcome. The house was complete, immune to alterations. Maybe the fact that it had no history contributed to that sense of sterility. I wonder what its current owners think of it. Have they made any major changes? Did our family leave a mark?

This house, though, has a past. The first time I saw the do-it-yourself cupboards under the basement stairs, I thought "my dad could have built these." Months later I discovered a pint of homemade jam at the back of one of those cupboards. The container was the old-fashioned kind; they haven't made canning jars like that for ages. The jam was dark brown and tasted -- yes, Jerry opened it -- sweet. I had no idea what kind of fruit it was til last fall, when I overcooked a batch of plum compote I'd made from our backyard tree. That’s history.

Going, going... GONE

2010-04-05T18:08:00.000-07:00

Like her sister, Stella Luna has drinking issues. Her preferred watering hole is the tub, though, not the sink. Last night was last call at the ol' bathtub saloon.

Jer and I slept very well on the guest room futon. Nice to know that there's nothing inherently flawed in the accommodations Casa Jereva has been proudly offering visitors since 2006. There's a slight logistical challenge in figuring out what needs to live downstairs for the duration (backup reading glasses, everyday jewelry, robe, slippers, underwear, at least one set of clothes) and what we can grab as needed from its usual place adjacent to the construction zone.

Shortly after Steve arrived this morning to tear things apart, I had to leave for a meeting. Poor me; I missed some major noise. I'm kind of sorry I didn't get to see the old cast-iron tub reduced to a pile of shards. I got home around 1 PM, by which time the tub, toilet, and most of the vanity were history.

Jerry reported that Steve had carried out an entire wall section of tile, whole. That must have been some mighty grout. I thought the pattern (below) left by the adhesive was kind of cool. I wonder who installed it, and I'm struck, not for the first time in this house, by the similarity between the original owners' color palette and ours. The paint we've chosen for the bathroom walls is a shade or three lighter than this, but definitely in the same family.

Steve told us he removed four, count them, layers of linoleum. We laid the blue-green Marmoleum (tm) on top of the intolerable red that was there when we bought the house. I'm sure today was the first time the subfloor has been exposed since the house was built in 1954. Goodbye, Standard Plebe toilet and what I assume are the remains of the tub.

By the end of the day Steve had completed a lot of the framing for the new shower surround and the adjacent built-in cabinet. China Rose went in to inspect. I imagine her thinking might be summed up as: "WTF?"

So, Day 1 went pretty well. The power saw popped the circuit breaker a few times (old house, old wiring), and one of the studs in the photo below will have to be repositioned. Steve will be back in the morning, and the plumber is expected to show up after lunch.

The animals have been holding up okay, and so have we thus far. It's a cold, wet blustery day, with gusts up to 26, according to our weather station. A big limb came down from a tree across the street. All five of us are in the living room at the moment, watching Rachel Maddow. This might be the evening for a stupid movie over dinner. Men Who Stare at Goats should do it, I'm thinking.

Hopping down the bunny trail

2010-04-04T14:58:00.001-07:00

These giant tracks appeared on our block this morning, each pawprint spaced about 10 feet apart. That's one big rabbit.

Our Easter Sunday has been spent clearing everything that wasn't screwed down -- plus several items that were -- from the bathroom, carrying some essentials downstairs to the guest suite, and organizing the space where we'll camp out for the duration. Here's China Rose enjoying one last drink from the old sink. We chose its replacement, a pedestal model, with her quaffing behavior in mind. Yes, we're insane. I'd like to imagine that she'll appreciate the effort we went to, but who am I kidding? She's a cat.

She and her sister Stella Luna are very much aware that something's up. Familiar stuff has disappeared, or moved to unaccustomed locations. The focus of activity is about to shift to another part of the house. In the cativerse, that's huge. So far Sophie seems unfazed. That's more than I can say for Jerry and myself, creatures of habit that we are.

Steve the contractor emailed to say he'd be here between 8 and 8:30 tomorrow morning. Whee.

You know what this means, don't you?

2010-04-02T15:04:00.000-07:00

The construction potty appeared mysteriously around noon today, like the monolith in 2001. So, the neighbors who don't already know we've got a project scheduled will figure it out pretty soon.

In 1991, when Jerry and I undertook our first major home improvement -- a second-storey master bedroom and bath addition to our house in Berkeley -- we chronicled it on The WELL, the pioneering online conferencing system we've belonged to for 20+ years. We started a discussion topic called It'll Be So Nice When It's Finished. From building permit application to addition-warming party, we posted an update virtually every day. Other WELL members followed the construction process, asking questions and offering useful suggestions. The conversation served as a reality check, a support group and, occasionally, an outlet for venting the day's frustrations.

In late 2005, when we converted a portion of our Portland basement into a guest room and bath, I put up a web site with weekly updates. This time, the images (along with my terse and occasionally amusing captions) told the tale. I realized partway into the process that I might have chosen the wrong medium; static web pages are okay for photo albums, but I missed the interactivity we had on The WELL. If I'd had a blog at the time, I would've blogged the guest suite remodel as I subsequently did, kinda-sorta, with the front garden makeover and the backyard deck.

Now that the economy seems to be recovering, however weakly, we've laid the groundwork for a cosmetic makeover of our main floor, so-called master, bathroom. We're working with Steve Amick, the same contractor who did the aforementioned downstairs guest quarters. Our efforts over the last several weeks have centered around visiting showrooms and spec'ing out what we want -- sink, shower, toilet, tile, flooring and all the necessary fixtures. The biggest and most obvious change involves replacing the old cast iron tub with a glass-front stall shower, thus carving out space for a tall built-in storage cabinet.

The project starts Monday morning. Jerry and I will move downstairs for the duration, after spending much of this holiday weekend stripping down the construction zone and surrounding areas. We're counting on the cats to follow us to the guest room futon. We'll need that comfort. Hopefully Sophie, the pooch, will get to keep her own bedroom adjacent to ground zero. I use that term in the pre-9/11 sense.

Mea culpa

2009-09-05T16:39:00.000-07:00

Forgive me Blogger, for I have sinned; it's been two months since my last confession. I blame Facebook, with its deceptively simple "What's on your mind?" prompt and the built-in payoff of a flurry of comments from a random cross-section of your hundreds of "friends". I didn't realize the extent to which Facebook had sucked the juice out of my blogging habit til a couple of real-life pals asked me for an update on Sophie. It felt to me like I'd been documenting her every poop on Facebook, over-sharing, like the proud new parent of a human baby. For my non-FB-enabled friends though, the life-with-dog saga seemed to halt abruptly on July 7th. Sorry about that. Obviously, life goes on:

In explaining the appeal of Facebook to my friend Jackie, a paper artist who recently launched a thoughtful, literate and entertaining blog of her own, I told her that blogging is more about writing essays, journaling, or in-depth musing-out-loud. It's linear, whereas FB goes in many directions at once. Blogging also creates a permanent record, whereas FB is evanescent, much more about what's happening right now. Twitter, I went on to pontificate, is even more fleeting than FB; unless you have no life at all, it's impossible to keep up; you just dip your toe into the datastream now and then.

Of course blogging has a strong community component, but Facebook is more overtly social. When I blog, I'm in my room, writing. On Facebook, I'm hanging out with friends (and "friends"), schmoozing, bantering, and keeping up with each other's lives. Facebook feels more superficial than blogging because it's conversational; it's not designed for extended-form writing. But it's a powerful medium for staying in touch with minimal effort.

The day Sophie wandered into our life I posted on Facebook, something like "We seem to have found a dog." A dozen friends asked questions, offered advice, expressed astonishment about what was goin' down at Cathouse Jereva. I posted a succession of updates about taking the dog to the vet, shelling out the $$$ for treatment, keeping her for the weekend, walking her to our neighborhood 4th of July parade, and so on. Once we decided that she was here to stay, I filed a status report every few days on how she was doing with the cats.

A Facebook friend who lives up the street offered to lend me a crate; several others made useful suggestions or simply supportive comments that meant a lot to us in our inexperienced and uncertain state. Meanwhile, as events unfolded, the aforementioned Jackie and I were conducting a comparable discussion in email (she's a dedicated and knowledgeable animal owner, and lives with both dogs and cats). But the Facebook conversation was, by its nature, much more timely, with multiple participants and points of view.

So, eight weeks down the road, Sophie is healthy, adorable and, as far as we can tell, happy in her new home. She no longer sleeps in the garage, but has graduated to our office. She and the cats have reached a rapprochement. We have no problem leaving them alone in the house together. While they're not exactly curling up in one big fluffy pile of mutual adoration, they seem to've worked out most of their issues. They all hang out in the living room with us. Occasionally we'll see them touch noses. Sophie likes to bury her muzzle deep in China's fur; China tolerates it. Stella and Sophie have bonded over their mutual interest in food, often each other's. There's no barking or lunging, very little hissing, no more chasing or consequent hiding in nuclear-alert-level strongholds. If you'd forecast this back in July -- and several people did -- I would not have believed it.

Blogging isn't the only area in which I've been negligent. I like to think I lead a relatively healthy life -- a low-meat, high-vegetable diet, regular exercise, plenty of sleep, no interesting drugs -- but I haven't had a complete physical exam in at least 25 years. Shameful, I know. However, it's on the calendar now. Our dear friend David Gans, a professional musician, had a heart attack recently while touring. He's younger than I am, but cardiovascular disease runs in his family, as it does in mine. David was lucky, and his prognosis looks good. He wrote, with his usual eloquence, about his experience (http://cloudsurfing.gdhour.com/archives/2544) and commented in a follow-up email: "I've heard from lots of people that this tale has inspired them to pay more attention to their own habits and health status; if I have inspired anyone to take steps to protect their own future, then the whole thing will have been worth it. I hope you'll pass that URL along to others who may find it useful." So that's what I'm doing.

Sophie's choice

2009-07-07T22:22:00.001-07:00

We confirmed cat people seem to have adopted a dog. She found us last Thursday, just before the holiday weekend. She came running up to us on the homebound leg of our standard morning walk, which that day took us through the Woodstock neighborhood -- a ridiculously shaggy small tan dog with a slight limp and a sweet demeanor. She followed us doggedly (ha ha) for several blocks. Finally I picked her up and discovered that her coat was thoroughly matted and she was filthy, with bits of paper and foil attached to her dreadlocked hair. No collar or tags, of course.

She was perfectly happy being held, so I carried her across relatively-busy 39th Ave. and then down our block. I borrowed a leash from our next-door neighbor, and headed to Woodstock Vet to see if the dog was micro-chipped. She wasn’t, unsurprisingly. The tech suggested taking her to County Animal Control, saying that small dogs are adopted almost immediately -- even in this economy, she maintained. Given this baby's physical condition and the holiday weekend coming up, I thought “no way”; three days and they’d euthanize her. So I pondered a while and finally opted to pay to have her de-matted, cleaned up, examined, and then boarded overnight while we figured out what to do next.

The vet called later in the day; the dog's basically in good health, 3-6 years old [later, the chief tech there insisted that she was no older than 2], probably a Lhasa Apso but maybe a Shih Tzu or even Maltese mix. But she had numerous bite wounds on her legs (that explained the limp) as well as on her face, neck and back, plus dermatitis, a huge hematoma in her right ear that's causing a swelling on the earflap – and, oh yes, she apparently hasn't been spayed. Oddly enough, her nails appeared to've been trimmed not all that long ago, and she was free of fleas.

They still had some work to do on one eye, which turned out to be irritated but not infected. (Be grateful for small favors, huh?) The doc also reported that nobody there had ever before seen a dog with a coat in such bad shape; the clippings filled a garbage can. Also: the entire staff was in love with her (the dog, not the vet). They emailed us these Before (above) and After (below) photos; thanks, Kasey and Dr. H.

Meanwhile, back at the cathouse, I'd been checking CraigsList and the lost dog listings at Animal Control, Dove Lewis (regional pet hospital/support agency), and several other sites. Nada. I filled out and posted online Found Dog reports, and used one of the “before” photos to make a Found Dog poster. On our walk the following morning, Jer and I plastered the neighborhood where the pup had run up to us. We got one response from a woman on Craigslist whose elderly neighbor had lost a dog of this type. She lived more than 100 blocks from us; unlikely, though not out of the question if the dog had been wandering for a while. But her dog was chipped; this one isn't. Her email came in while the pup was still at the vet, so I called and they offered to rescan her, which they did -- definitely no chip.

Jer and I picked up the dog Friday afternoon, stopping first to buy a collar and some kibbles. Three technicians came out of the back room at various points, along with the vet, to tell us how sweet and tolerant she'd been during their procedures, and how much they loved her. They adjusted the billing so that we didn't have to pay more than I already had, even though they did a lot more work than anticipated. They sent us home with a spiffy green leash to match her collar, plus Clavamox (amoxicillin) and drops for her problematic ear.

The challenge now is getting her and the cats to tolerate each other. We set up camp for her in the garage, just off the kitchen, with a bed, toys, food and water. When we got back on Friday, I walked her through the house on leash, just to calibrate the situation. When she saw the cats, she barked and lunged, Stella growled and split, and China Rose freaked and hid in the closet. I made a bad mistake on Saturday by bringing her into the living room, where she sniffed around and finally settled by me, quite comfortably, on the sofa. About 20 minutes later, China Rose came around the corner, caught sight of the dog -- and vice versa -- and ran at lightning speed, hissing, to hide in the closet again. The dog went crazy lunging and barking at both her and Stella Luna, who'd been sleeping, oblivious, behind the recliner. Sigh. Back to the garage apartment.

Saturday night was a low point; I had a total meltdown. Poor Jer. The puppy had really wormed (no pun intended) her way into my heart, but I figured a cat-aggressive pooch would be a non-starter in this household. I posted an adoption notice to our neighborhood email list, telling the story to date, and said, on Facebook, that it wasn't going to work out, and how sad I was about it. Several dog-savvy friends and neighbors piped up, all saying basically the same thing: Give it time, try limited exposures, take it slow, maybe crate the dog while introducing the cats, and so on. So we decided to try it. A neighbor loaned us a crate, and we've been putting the dog in there and bringing the cats to "visit," rewarding them for their tolerance and the puppy for not barking and lunging at them. We're making progress, slowly.

Aside from the feline issue, she seems beautifully socialized. She's terrific with kids (the little girls next door have been over several times; this morning they brought a couple of their friends and played with the dog for about 20 minutes) and with other dogs of all sizes. We walked her to the neighborhood parade on the 4th -- despite its small-town size, it was preceded by a fire engine, siren going, and concluded with a patrol car, dome lights flashing, plus a brace of police motorcycles -- and she showed no aggression or startle reaction at all. I walked her before bedtime and, even with fireworks going off throughout the neighborhood, she was perky yet calm. (Yes, I'm sure she's not deaf.) She's also fine riding in the car.

We didn't put any energy into naming her at first because, given the long weekend, it's possible her owner(s) were out of town and hadn’t had a chance to see any of our notices. Of course I'd be conflicted about returning her to someone who’d neglected her so badly. On the other hand, she doesn't show any signs of having been emotionally or physically abused in any other way.

It's funny; Jer and I have occasionally speculated about eventually getting a dog, ideally one we knew was fine with cats, and certainly a big dog, or at least a medium-sized one, not one of these li'l 13-pound critters. But she wandered into our life and... here she is.

She's scheduled for surgery Thursday AM on the hematoma in her ear. More $$$ She'll have to wear one of those Elizabethan collars for a while, which will make her even more alien in the eyes of the cats.

Now I understand how dogs end up with insipid names like Sweetie Pie, Baby, Precious and Honey, because that's what we'd been defaulting to calling her. As of this week, though, she's Sophie. The name was Jerry's idea. It's not all that original, but it's homey, and it seems to fit.

Pulling a Marcia

2009-07-01T22:50:00.000-07:00

Several months ago my friend Adele invited a mutual acquaintance to join her for lunch at an Indian restaurant she'd discovered. Marcia met her there and announced offhandedly that she'd actually been there the day before to check the place out. Adele was nonplussed: You didn't trust my directions? Or, worse yet, my taste? Not a big deal, but I sympathize; there's something vaguely galling about spoiling a friend's incipient delight by pre-empting her introduction to a new place or experience she thought you'd enjoy and was hoping you'd enjoy together.

Last week my friend Jackie and I found ourselves in Chinatown, hungry. I'd parked on 4th just off Burnside, by a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant I knew (thanks to Adele, coincidentally) and figured would do just fine. As we entered Jackie caught sight of a sign up the block. "Ping!" she said, simply delighting in the name. She's from out of town, and had no way of knowing how hot and hyped Andy Ricker's new place is, let alone that several of us, Adele included, were planning to meet for dinner there the following night. Later, I emailed Adele saying "Hey, I could've taken my friend to Ping for lunch, but I didn't want to pull a Marcia." She replied that she was proud of me.

Today I pulled a Marcia. Adele is a thrifting buddy as well as a restaurant pal, and we'd talked about including Village Merchants on SE Division in our next lunch-and-cheap-shopping tour. But I happened to drive by the shop this morning en route home from a dim sum breakfast with Libbi, and stopped in, spur-of-the-moment-like, just to check the place out. The first item that caught my eye was a book that, almost literally, had Adele's name on it, along with a $2 price tag. I confessed my transgression, and I think I am forgiven.

In the grand scheme of things, pulling a Marcia is a mere peccadillo, I'm sure. Especially when it's not premeditated, and you discovered the venue, and you bring your friend a prezzie. I wonder, though, if other, more subtle and advanced cultures, have a phrase for this vaguely awkward social situation, or if we're the only civilization neurotic enough to care.

Another world

2009-05-06T18:19:00.000-07:00

I'd been talking with my birder friends Maureen and Debbie for more than a year about taking a trip to Malheur Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon for some springtime birding. The three of us met on an Audubon outing to Sauvie Island in late 2007, bonded instantly, and have managed to get together for day excursions every few months since then. We finally set a date for about three weeks after the annual Migratory Bird Festival in Burns. The tourists were gone and the birding, along with the company, was excellent.

Maureen and her husband Tony own a ranch outside of Burns, adjacent to the Refuge. Her part-time resident status meant that we had a built-in tour guide as well as insider access to local folks, legends and lore. The ranch house, which sits on a rise in the midst of 120 high-desert acres, is comfy and -- luxury! -- we each had our own room. We spent the daylight hours tooling around Harney County, looking at birds familiar and un-, checking out various geological, historical and retail sites of interest, and talking-story with various residents. Each evening, we poured wine and threw together a simple dinner, then yakked until far past our usual bedtimes. Each morning (some earlier than others), we grabbed our binoculars and field guides and headed out for another day of birding.
Part of the reason why the area's such a birding hotspot each spring is that snowmelt from the mountains is channeled for agricultural irrigation. From the road we saw field after flooded field that will come under cultivation later in the season. But at this time of year it's all marshland, prime habitat for hundreds of species.

Deb has just put together a comprehensive list of the birds we saw. She counted 55 species. I won't bore you with the full edition, since this isn't a birding blog. But the new ones on my life list, if I kept one -- I'm not that formal a birder -- would be Wilson's phalarope, American avocet, white-faced ibis (so weird; who came up with that bill?), Loggerhead shrike, Say's phoebe, lazuli bunting, and chukar. I just like saying some of those names. We also saw bald and golden eagles, harriers and kestrels, redtail hawks, turkey vultures, ravens and crows (of course), sandhill cranes (above, on the wetlands; so lovely), egrets and herons, red-winged and yellow-headed blackbirds, magpies, western meadowlarks, and a partridge in... no, a pheasant on the ranch house deck, who called out to us every morning (woot woot, like an Andean flute) and seemed to think he owned the place.
Harney County is Oregon's largest and, we were told, most sparsely-populated county. I was struck by the austere beauty of the sagebrush-dotted desert, with its classic "western" rim rock formations and distinctive peaks, most notably Steens Mountain, as a backdrop. The sky seems lower there; the horizon all around.

It wasn't all about birding. We also visited Diamond Craters and had lunch at the funky, charming Hotel Diamond, shown here with one of its surreally-irrelevant parking meters. We chatted with Dick Jenkins, a local historian, about the 19th century Round Barn that he looks after. We had breakfast (one of the best veggie omelettes I've eaten) at The Narrows, a restaurant, saloon and RV park down the road from Maureen and Tony's ranch, jawed a while with the proprietors, and bottle-fed the motherless calves -- a bull and a cow -- they're caring for on the property. Ron told us that kids staying at the RV park love to feed the calves. This kid did.

Socially, the entire county felt to this outsider like a small town; despite the distance between towns, the locals, with their deep roots, shared history and strong sense of place, all seem to know, or at least know of, each other. This is cattle country; ranchers rule. People dress like cowboys because they are. The Obama sticker on Deb's car was the only one I saw in four days in Harney County. I wouldn't want to live there, but I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity to have spent a few days, in just about perfect circumstances, on a planet far from Portland.

April went where, exactly?

2009-05-06T15:16:00.000-07:00

I want to talk about my birding excursion to eastern Oregon last week, but realized that more than a month has gone by since I last posted here. What the hell happened to April?

Well, I finished the coursework for my master gardener certification. The final was 65 questions, multiple choice, open book, with a week to complete. I, um, aced it. Now I'm focusing on logging the required volunteer "payback" hours. Besides my Monday gig at the Rhody Garden, I did a shift at the Hardy Plant Society's massive sale at Expo, which brought with it early (as in before the hall opens to the public) shopping privileges. I bought some shade plants to complement the hostas I've been plunking in to colonize the dim reaches of our backyard. My purchases included a tall, handsome Jack-in-the-pulpit, sweet woodruff in a 4" pot, two epimediums (epimedia?) to replace the one I killed last year, and a couple of species new to me, a brunnera and a pulmonaria, a.k.a lungwort. The latter is much prettier than its name suggests. It had an abundance of flowers, both blue and coral-pink, when I got it. I subsequently heard that the blue blossoms turn pink, and vice versa, when the flower is pollinated. Kind of like a home pregnancy test. That's it in the pic just below. The tiny woodruff specimen has already tripled in size, which is what you want in a ground cover, since I planted it three weeks ago.

Gail Langellotto, our OSU Extension online instructor, was the guest speaker at the monthly meeting of the Multnomah County Master Gardeners, where they feted this year's crop of interns with a potluck, so I got to meet her as well as some of the local MGs en masse. Gail is much more petite and funny in person. She gave an entertaining and informative lecture that included weird facts about insect sex and great closeups of her favorite spiders, the Wolfs. The MGs seem like a friendly, down-to-earth (pun intended) bunch. I'll attend a couple more meetings, at least, and see if I want to get more involved with the group.

April was a good month for live music. We heard Arlo Guthrie in a magnificent venue, Beth Israel synagogue in NW Portland. Our tickets were for the very last row but, due to a screwup involving actual vs. theoretical chairs, and the fact that the expensive patron section down front was apparently not sold out, we ended up with seats in the third row. What a treat. He didn't do Alice's Restaurant, but it was a joy to see ol' Arlo (oops; he's younger than me) still ramblin' along. The following week was Portland's own Storm Large (who started out as a club rock 'n' roller but did a credible job last season as Sally Bowles in Cabaret) in Crazy Enough, her autobiographical one-woman show at Portland Center Stage. She was stunningly good -- funny, raucous, touching. The week after that we went to Carvlin Hall, the regular venue for the Portland Folk Music Society's monthly concerts, to see the Berrymans. We first heard them when they were in town a couple of years ago, and I promptly bought most of their CDs. Lou and Peter play accordion and guitar, respectively, and write some of the funniest, most verbally complex songs I've ever heard. I'm a sucker for clever lyrics; what can I say? A full concert is almost too rich, like eating a box of See's chocolates at one sitting, but I can stand pigging out on the Berrymans every once in a while.

Speaking of eating, although we've cut way back on expensive restaurants, we did manage to score some noteworthy meals out last month: the fun and funky Porque Non? on Hawthorne; the bunker-like Alexis at the corner of 2nd and West Burnside, which turns out to have tasty, reasonably-priced Greek food, friendly, efficient and adorable waiters, and an authentic but not over-the-top atmosphere; the big-deal Heathman, where we'd never been before but used the occasion of our 27th wedding anniversary to investigate. Another, unexpected, treat was dinner (at Pastini on NE Broadway) with John Bryans, my longtime publisher, who was in town for a conference and remembered, just in time to connect, that I live in Portland, now.

Toward the end of the month, my art quilt group went on its annual retreat. This was our third trip to the Tillamook area, which offers both beach access and ice cream for lunch. Our rental this year had a spectacular ocean view, with Three Arch Rocks positioned just so. Terry and Gerrie both did a great job blogging our stay; so just click on their names if you care to read all about it. They got some good photos, too.

Two days after I returned from retreat, Jer's daughter Lauren and her partner Annette arrived for a quick overnight visit. They were en route home to Michigan from Bandon Dunes, on the southern Oregon coast, where the movie Golf in the Kingdom -- in which they have, comme une dit, an "interest" -- is being shot. Jer got to hang out with them the following morning, while I reported for duty at Taste of the Nation. This was my second year volunteering for TOTN, a benefit at which some of the best restaurants, wineries and micro-breweries in the area (fewer this year than previously, thanks again to the wretched economy) dish up tasty morsels and sips. I'd told the organizers that I wanted to be kept busy this year; last time, there seemed to be too many hands for too few jobs. Be careful what you wish for; I spent hours wrangling pipe and drape (picture those curtained partitions in exhibit halls) to help transform a cavernous auto showroom into a warmer and more elegant space. I worked alongside folks a third of my age and three times my strength; it felt good, though, and I had just enough energy left to hook up with Jerry when he arrived as a paying guest and make the food and drink rounds with him.

April is income tax month, of course. The good news is that, thanks to faithfully paying estimated quarterlies, we got a chunk back this year from the Feds. It's not as if they gave us a gift, but it kinda feels that way. When my brother Larry was here in March, he allowed me almost unlimited playtime with his iPhone. Shortly after he left, a piece of trim fell off my own perfectly functional, if unexciting, cell phone, rendering it painfully tacky-looking. That, plus the prospect of a tax refund, was slim but sufficient justification for Gadget Girl to indulge in an iPhone for herself. I love love love it. If I were still toiling in infotech and traveling as much as I used to, I would have bought one "for the business" months ago. As it is, I had to work hard to rationalize the purchase, but (as you see) I managed. Jerry got a new phone, too, to replace the hand-me-down StarTAC I'd nominally reassigned to him five or six years ago. It's a plain vanilla generic model, but much easier to operate than his old one, and he's actually getting into the habit of using it. Let me know if you want his number so he can practice answering.

A small dinner party or two, an art exhibit, Frost/Nixon at Portland Center Stage, chats with neighbors, my usual weekly volunteer gigs... I think that about covers it for April. Sometime in mid-March my dear friend Libbi and I tried to find one morning that would work for both of us for brunch. The first possibility was May 8th, this coming Friday. That's the kind of month it was.

In the few days I was out of town this past week, our modest veggie patch burgeoned into edible-size spinach and butter lettuce, and most of the trees leafed out (the photo at the top of this post is our backyard pink chestnut, bare just a few weeks ago). Those so-called April showers are lingering into May. At this very moment, though, there's a sunbreak. I need to get out and garden. Whoops; rain again. I missed last Saturday's reportedly spectacular windstorm, but saw some of the damage -- a big elm down at SE 36th and Ogden (Jer was out the next day taking photos) and, around the corner on Knapp, a house where a tree fell and badly smashed a corner of the roof.

The mail arrived a little while ago, including a Penzey's Spices catalog labeled "Early Summer." Who are they kidding? I'm just grateful that spring has finally arrived.

When love's in bloom, the whole world's a pistil

2009-03-25T10:23:00.000-07:00

You know how teachers have their students write thank-you notes after a field trip? The volunteer coordinator at the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden, where I'm now working a few hours a week, showed me some she'd saved, including drawings depicting what the kids had learned during their visit.

The fact that you can tell azaleas from rhodies by counting the stamens -- azaleas typically have five, rhodys ten -- apparently made a big impression on one group of 3rd graders; every illustration featured prominent stamens. I grabbed a couple of shots with my cell cam.

Ah yes, spring is here, and romance, botanical style, is in the air. The amaryllis that came back to life last month, following a winter of total neglect, is now in full bloom. Check out the stamens on that baby.

My work at the Rhody Garden counts toward fulfillment of the Master Gardener volunteer practicum I mentioned in my paean to herbaceous perennials earlier this month. We're now down to the last couple of weeks of coursework before the final exam. I have no specific plans for putting my certification, once I earn it, to use. I've always loved gardening. I learned to weed before I could walk, at my green-thumbed mother's knee. Now that I have the time, I liked the idea of picking up some theory to go along with what I've experienced and intuited over the years. Plus, focusing on growing things seemed like a pleasant coping mechanism for getting through a Portland winter. And, I must admit, I was curious to see how much my brain could retain, at this point, in a structured learning situation. To that end, I'll just say that I'm really, really glad that the final is open book.

One thing the course hasn't covered in detail is plant identification, as in "What is this and where should I plant it?" and variations of that question. But I've joined the Hardy Plant Society, whose exhibit at the garden show impressed me so much, which should help address that deficit in my knowledge base.

Funny, I've had three small fiber-arts projects gathering dust on my design wall all winter. Has this garden thing taken over? Is that why I'm not doing art?

Chef Jerub Presents

2009-03-25T10:05:00.001-07:00

I'm lucky, I know, to live with a guy who loves to cook. At least two of my friends have offered to take him off my hands, for that reason alone, should I ever get tired of him. As if.

The meal above was chicken breasts with a fig and balsamic vinegar sauce, potato casserole with caramelized onions, and asparagus with a honey-mustard yogurt-based sauce. The one just below was Goan-style shrimp curry on basmati rice with a roasted vegetable salad.

Another dinner, below, was all about orange. Salmon with varicolored cherry tomatoes, pureed sweet potatoes, and carrot salad. The avocado garnish makes it pop, don'tcha think?

At least somebody in this family is expressing his artistic side. I think all of my creative energy is going into gardening at this point, or thoughts of spring. I'll have more to say about that. But first, dessert:

Literally made me laugh

2009-03-16T15:07:00.000-07:00

This is a whole genre on YouTube. Search for "literal version" to turn up other song, uh, treatments.

Lessons from herbaceous perennials

2009-03-03T15:21:00.000-08:00

As both of my faithful readers have noticed, I haven't been blogging much lately. I've been reading, cocooning, trying to keep up with email, generally feeling more like taking in rather than putting out. I haven't shot many photos, either, in the last six weeks or so. I certainly haven't spent any time in the studio, unless you count mending clothes and teaching myself how to knit cables. I've felt like an imposter at the last several art quilt group meetings I've attended; you mean darning socks isn't a form of creative expression? Maybe it's just the late-winter blahs, but my creative impulse has been at what feels like an all-time low.

But I have been going to school. In January I began a master gardener certification course, offered online through OSU Extension. We're about two-thirds of the way through; this week's module happens to be herbaceous ornamental plants, both annuals (the single-season dealies) and perennials (the ones that come back on their own).

In addition to 12 weeks of coursework, including lectures, readings, discussions, quizzes, assignments and a final exam, we're required to put in between 60 and 70 hours of volunteer work. Last Friday I logged a couple of hours just handing out literature at the Yard, Garden and Patio show. Unlike last year, when I staggered out of the Convention Center under the weight of a Meyer lemon tree-let, a witch hazel sapling, and the mother of all aloe vera plants, my takeaways this time were modest: a pair of $2 gardening gloves and an a-ha! moment.

When we first moved to Portland, I noticed several low plants with ratty-looking dark-green leathery leaves growing on the east side of the house. In late winter they put out inconspicuous drooping blossoms in muted shades of pink, purple and cream. Eventually I learned that they were hellebores, prized hereabouts as shade plants. Whatever; they seemed happy on their own, and I was glad to see something thrive on that semi-neglected portion of the lot.

The Hardy Plant Society had a major exhibit at the garden show, several tables of specimen plants and cuttings, with identifying tags. There was a lot to see and absorb. On my first pass through, I noticed some exquisite, tropical-looking blossoms floating in a shallow bowl of water. On my second pass, I read the tag: Hellebores. Wow.

How could I have overlooked these stunners? Easily; the flower faces hang downward, coyly, on hook-shaped stems. From above you'd never know. I wonder how long it would have taken me to discover their beauty on my own. Thank you, Hardy Planters, for the inspiration. Sometimes you have to go beyond the obvious, make an extra effort, place things in a different context, look at them from a new perspective. All clichés, but true -- in art and in life.

Yesterday was gorgeous; it felt like a foretaste of spring. I spent a couple of hours out back at my potting bench, transplanting and fertilizing house plants. The pushy amaryllis that died back to an inert bulb after its flamboyant show last winter has suddenly extruded -- overnight, it seems -- a pair of fresh green stalks. Plants know when it's time to start growing again. People sometimes need a reminder.

She wears it well

2009-01-24T23:33:00.000-08:00

A little old-fashioned, but that's all right

Free at Last

2009-01-24T17:03:00.000-08:00

On January 20th, 1981 the man I was seeing told me that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. A day or two later, billboards went up throughout the Bay Area: Free at Last. The signs referred to the end of the Iran hostage crisis, but Jerry and I took the words personally. We'd found each other; our spirits were soaring. The road ahead would be rocky -- both of us were still married to other people -- but we'd travel it together. Ultimately, anything was possible.

January 20th is one of several dates we still keep track of; we refer to it as our Betrothal anniversary. (Isn't "betrothal" a lovely, old-fashioned word?)

I don't have to tell you what happened on January 20th this year. Free at last. Free of the lying, dysfunctional... don't get me started. It won't be easy, but I'm filled with the sense that, ultimately, anything -- and I mean anything good -- is possible. I haven't felt that way in 28 years.

In his prime

2009-01-11T12:23:00.000-08:00

The universe has a weird sense of timing. Without making a resolution of it, I decided at the turn of the year to start decluttering, a little bit every day. Last week I was working on the storage shelves under the basement stairs and found a box of video-cam cassettes Jerry shot back in the '90s. I asked him to decide what to do with them, and of course he started watching. "I think you might want to see this," he said. The first tape he'd popped into the player had a long sequence of Abbie at the age of five or six -- it was at our house in the Berkeley hills, so it must have been prior to March of 1996 when we moved to the coast -- freaking out with a baggie of fresh catnip. He was a beautiful boy, and he loved his 'nip well into his dotage.

A later tape, shot at Sea Ranch, captured part of a stunt Abs used to do fairly often. He'd accompany us onto the second-floor deck, off the living room, where Jer and I often went to watch the sunset. From there he'd jump to the railing, then up to the lower section of the roof over the porch, and from there to the steeply-pitched main roof, where he'd climb to the peak and sit by the chimney to watch the sun go down. He had the best view in (or on) the house. When the show was over, he'd retrace his steps and leaps in reverse. Watching the tape reminded me that I had a couple of stills of Abbie doing his evening acrobatic routine. What a guy.

One of the other videos consisted of an existentially boring tour of the apartment that Jerry had rented for his mom at Rossmoor, a senior community in the 'burbs east of Berkeley. He'd taken the footage to West Virginia to show her where she'd be living once she moved to California. Of course, Tom's been gone for more than a decade now.

Another showed my brother and his wife in San Diego, before their son was born. Josh is 14 now, and Larry and Sheri have been divorced for ages. Another was shot one Easter at Jer's daughter's house in Marin county. It included his son Marc, who died of AIDS later that year, my mom, Lauren's then-partner Lucinda, and me in my long-haired and still relatively youthful glory. Sic transit...

My inner academic pointed out that I could have called this post "Historical artifacts unearthed during a routine household archeological dig." Yeah, that'll bring in the readers. Of course these priceless treasures will be re-archived. We should digitize them, I suppose.

I got a lot of comfort from watching that footage of Abbie in his prime. He had a good life and, on whatever level cats process such things, I think he knew it.

Rest in Peace, Abbie

2008-12-29T13:06:00.000-08:00

We took Abbie for his last visit to the vet this morning. He's been declining for the last three or four weeks -- arthritic, semi-incontinent (though he tried, heaven knows), not much more than a familiar furry presence camped out on the heating vent in the living room.

He stopped eating a few days ago, even tuna, and stopped drinking voluntarily yesterday. Up to that point, though, he still yowled to be picked up and placed on the bathroom sink, his favorite oasis. But this morning he refused the syringe of water I was trying to administer, and was too weak to stand.

The vet said that his temperature was 92 degrees, way below normal. Clearly his systems were shutting down. They say you know when a pet's time has come, often because there's no there there anymore. But Abs was present until the last moment -- vocalizing, though faintly, registering his surroundings, nestling in for strokes, looking at us with his big blue eyes.

Being more or less snowbound the last couple of weeks turned out to be kind of a blessing; lots of lap time for the Abster, two full-time servants tending to his needs. This is the last picture I took of him, earlier this month, with the capacious Stella Luna in the background. I posted a birthday tribute when he turned 19 last April. We'll toast him in absentia on his 20th. You were a damn good cat, Abbie, and we'll miss you more than words can tell.

Snow Fun

2008-12-23T17:21:00.001-08:00

I last posted a week ago Sunday, when the snow started falling. Here we are almost ten days later, and that initial snowfall seems balmy and bucolic by comparison. The headline above is from this morning's paper. It's snowed almost daily for the last week and a half. Until today, when we did nudge 32 degrees, temps have remained well below freezing. I'm tired of the cold, the cancellations, the constraints on getting around. Whiiiine.....

But the wintry weather does have its compensations. It's beautiful, of course; I put up a bunch of mostly-artsy pics on flickr. And it's primo weather for hot-tubbing. Squint and you could be at an expensive ski resort in Vail or Aspen, a handsome cowboy waiting for you in the steamy water:

We've been walking every day, as usual, breaking through the crunchy crust, trying not to slip as we follow foot-deep vehicle tracks on the mostly-deserted streets. I spotted this vanity plate (below) just around the corner from us. Yes: visualize rain!

I made up a new word the other morning, as each step we took fractured the ice-covered snow into sharp, ankle-biting shards: Snice. Here's a representative specimen:

And here's a snice example of ad hoc automotive sharkification:

As a matter of fact, I do have cabin fever, and apparently some of my neighbors do, too. On the other hand, our old kitty, Abbie, is losing ground, and it's nice to have an excuse to stay home, catering to his needs and providing almost-unlimited lap(top) service.

Still Not Used To It

2008-12-14T14:23:00.000-08:00

I only have four years of personal data to go on, but I'm reasonably sure by now that it snows most winters in Portland -- just not very much or very often. The last part of that sentence probably accounts for the tizzy into which the entire city seems to be thrown every time flurries enter the realm of meteorological possibility. I keep reading about our "mild" Northwest winters, and I suppose they are, compared to, say, New England, the Midwest or Greenland. After all, here it is mid-December and some of my roses are still blooming. But I spent half my life in that sunny C-word state to the south, and snow spells "serious winter" to me.

It's also primo hot tub weather, even better than rain. We dunked ourselves a couple of hours ago, and I felt like I was in a ski resort in Aspen. Hot-tubbing is my favorite winter sport, I fear.

The snow started around 7:40 this morning. At 7:30: nothing. Suddenly, the air was filled with huge fluffy flakes. Hours later, it's still coming down, finer and with quite an east wind behind it.

Another couple days of this would be just fine in my universe, but by mid-week I'd like it gone, please, so I and the other weather wimps in town can get on with our lives. And to think that winter is officially still a week away...

The Pattern from Hell

2008-12-14T12:40:00.000-08:00

Many months ago I picked up a pattern for a multi-pocketed totebag designed for schlepping crafts projects around. It had loads of compartments and specialized holders for knitting needles or paint brushes and other accoutrements. When I finally started the project I was appalled at how badly the instructions were written, with ambiguous and unhelpful illustrations, missing steps, measurement errors, and -- my pet peeve -- an inefficient workflow overall. The tech writer in me wanted to redo the entire thing.

An inexperienced sewer would have thrown up her hands in frustration. Instead, I grumbled my way through the process, making notes and drawing arrows and asterisks for the order in which I wanted to proceed. What a hassle. I had to force myself to work on it, a sure sign that something's wrong. But I'm actually rather pleased with the result, and now I know that I'm perfectly capable of designing and drafting my own patterns, duh, at least for a stupid totebag.

The datebook ritual

2008-12-03T17:25:00.000-08:00

Since 1970 or so, I've been keeping track of my life with a Sierra Club datebook. Despite my technolust in other areas, I'm not a PDA person; good ol' paper and ink give me the context I need. I can tell by the density of the markings on the page whether it's going to be a busy week or a light one. When an errand or to-do item slips by a day or two, I merely draw an arrow. An arrow squoogle that meanders down the page from Monday to is-it-Friday-already? denotes a certain urgency. If it doesn't get done that week, I re-enter it in what I think of the "sometime this week" space at the top of the next page. Or the one after that. Sometimes the act of writing and rewriting makes me reflect on whether it's worth doing at all.

The format of the Sierra Club Engagement Calendar, as it's officially called, hasn't changed in at least four decades. It's spiral-bound, a convenient size for whatever bag I'm carrying that year (truthfully, I tend to choose purses based on whether the datebook will fit). There are lovely nature photos on each facing page. Saturday and Sunday are grouped together, properly, at the bottom of each week. (One year I acquired a freebie datebook from some other source that I thought I could use instead, but pitched it as soon as I realized that Saturday was at the bottom of the page and Sunday at the top of the next one. In a week-at-a-glance calendar, it makes no sense to split a weekend like that. I would have been disoriented for the entire year.)

I make note of everything in the datebook -- birthdays and anniversaries, meetings and deadlines, concerts and theater dates, dinner invitations, due dates for bills, calls to make, chores and projects to get done. Before menopause, I put a cryptic little mark (okay, it was a "P") on the day when my next period was due. I literally would be lost without my datebook.

At some point I treated myself and my datebook to a slip-on leather cover, which helps it endure a year's worth of daily wear-and-tear. It also provides a couple of pockets for loose lists and other slips of paper. The cover itself is pretty beat up at this point, but it made me look slightly more corporate, back in the day, in meetings with Day Runner/Filofax people.

As next-year commitments accumulate, I list them on one of the blank Notes pages in the back of the book. When I start worrying about conflicts and double-bookings, generally sometime in November, I know it's time to buy my new datebook and start the transfer process. First, I go through my perpetual birthday book (you knew I had one of these, right?) and write all the pertinent names in the appropriate daily spaces. Then I transfer the recurring events -- monthly meetings, weekly volunteer gigs -- and finally the random items from the back of this year's book.

Both datebooks are in play from now til the end of the year, depending on the day on which New Year's falls. This year, I'll get to transfer the leather cover to the 2009 book around Monday, the 29th. Before archiving 2008, I'll look back through it and review the year in my mind. This is useful on general principles, but especially on those rare occasions (don't hold your breath) when we're inspired to write a holiday letter. My husband has noodged me not to cross old items out so heavily. My biographers will be grateful, I'm sure, to discover my datebook stash, since it's the closest thing to a journal I've ever kept.

The datebook is, of course, my personal scheduling assistant. It's way too much information for the other human in the household. For the basics of our shared life -- dinner dates, ticketed events, doctors' appointments and so on -- we keep a standard wall calendar by the phone in the kitchen. Here, I have no brand loyalty. For 2009 I think it'll be the Cat Lovers Against the Bomb calendar, which is published by Nebraskans for Peace and comes chock-a-block with commemorations related to peace and/or felines. Starting right in with January 2nd, I learned that, on that date in 1972, a cat in Scotland turned 43 and, exactly 20 years later, the UN established the first Conventional Arms Registry.

Clearly this calendar is going to be useful and entertaining when one of us is waiting on hold. Bet you didn't know that on August 18th, 1950, a four-month-old kitten, following a climbing party, scaled the Matterhorn in three days. And here I thought that August, with the exception of my birthday, lacked occasions for celebration. I wonder if Nebraskans for Peace has thought about doing a datebook?

Why I haven't been working on art

2008-12-03T16:03:00.000-08:00

My studio worktable has been occupied with thousands of tiny (and astoundingly pricey) Lego components, thanks to my adorable nephew Josh. Oh, you say, he only visited for a week over Thanksgiving? Well, I thought I'd give it a shot.

Yes, I've been lax on blogging, as well as art, the last several weeks. But I have another post on a different topic just about ready to go, and I did just put up twenty or so photos on Flickr, dating back to mid-October, when Jer's daughter and her partner visited and we did a wine country tour one day and the Crown Point-Multnomah Falls trip another. There's a pink stretch Hummer, to pique your interest, and a psychedelic cactus, as well as the usual spectacular fall foliage around the neighborhood, waterfowl at Crystal Springs Lake, and artsy shots from Oaks Bottom and the Bybee Bridge. Apparently I've been more into looking than talking the last few weeks.

I did not have my camera along, alas, a week ago Sunday, when we went to hear Joan Baez at the Aladdin. We had good seats and I could have kicked myself, had I not been enjoying the moment so much. She's still glorious, and I think my little phone-cam shots have a certain, um, primitive appeal.

Am I a mean, immature person for loving this?

2008-11-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

Finally

2008-11-05T10:54:00.000-08:00

For as long as I've known him, my husband has been fantasizing about "a charismatic leader" for this country, someone in the mold of JFK. Last night he got his wish.

We spent the evening at an election night party on the next block. What a wonderful contrast to 2000, when the mood started out fairly optimistic but turned nightmarishly grim. There were tears of joy this time around, instead of rage and frustration.

It's raining this morning in Portland, but the future of this country seems brighter than it has in years. Good luck, Barack. It ain't gonna be easy.

Preaching to the choir

2008-10-13T10:31:00.000-07:00

A Permanent Part of Portland

2008-10-10T16:34:00.000-07:00

A little over a year ago, Jerry and I bought a brick in Pioneer Courthouse Square. We specified that the inscription read JEREVA, 8.3.2005- . Shortly after I submitted the order, the brick mavens got in touch to make sure we were aware that they couldn't go back sometime in the future and add another date after the dash. I assured them that this wasn't a tombstone-type engraving.

They batch the brick orders, apparently, so ours wasn't installed until a couple of months ago. We got a map and a certificate, suitable for framing, signed by Mayor Potter. Ours is brick number 2273, in square 49 on side C, on the upper level near Broadway and Yamhill. We finally got over there to look for it; it took us a while to find it, but I think we have it triangulated now. I suppose we'll have to add it to our tour-guide itinerary. You've been warned, out-of-towners.

August 3rd, 2005, was the day we moved to Portland and began our new life in the Northwest. We're planning to keep that dash open-ended as long as we possibly can.

Subtle

2008-10-03T18:00:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not referring to Sarah Palin's performance (and that's what it was, in the sense of scripted and theatrical) in her debate with Joe Biden last night.

I've had this quilt on my design wall since last spring. Now that fall is here, I was determined to git 'er done. I posted about my original inspiration and design process here. My hangup was that the brownish squiggly fabric that I'd conceived as a unifying element just wasn't strong enough to do the job. I tried shadowing with fabric paints; still not assertive enough. (This is a very busy quilt!) Eventually, over the course of several sleepless 3 AMs, it came to me: dark organza.

The penultimate version is on the left, the finished product on the right. Unlike Biden and Palin, you can barely distinguish them, especially on a computer screen (though you can click the image to enlarge it), but to me, the sheer overlay makes a huge difference. I had just enough yardage from a natural-dyeing workshop (Was it walnut? Logwood with an iron mordant? Who knows?) to lay over most of the surface, quilt roughly along the seams of the problematic brown squiggle fabric, and then clip away the excess. Here's a detail of the overlaid and stitched-down organza:

I'm pleased with the result, and glad to get another UFO out of my workspace. It looks like fall is here for sure, and with it, quilting weather.

Harvest

2008-09-30T14:08:00.000-07:00

My main accomplishment last weekend was harvesting the bulk of the plums from our backyard tree. These are gorgeous, meaty Italian plums, with purple skins and yellow-gold flesh. I triaged them into (1) wrinkly: stew into compote for freezing; (2) firm-to-ripe: bake into tarts and/or eat over the next week or two; and (3) ready to go NOW.

I can't think of too many things more fulfilling than standing on a stepladder in your own back yard, shoulder-high in fresh fruit, sunlight glinting on the leaves all around you. Abundance.

The yield looked a lot like this picture from the year before last. I see that the harvest was two weeks earlier this season. Curious, since we had such a late, cold spring and a not very warm summer.

Speaking of matters agricultural, I've been meaning to post something about the bee-in (my term, not theirs) that we attended at Zenger Farm -- a working organic farm about 10 minutes from us in outer Southeast Portland -- a couple of weeks ago. A beautiful young woman, Jill Kuehler, executive director of Friends of Zenger Farm, introduced us to the place (note the solar panels above her) and then turned us over to a series of mini-tour guides -- Laura Masterson of 47th Avenue Farm, Mace Vaughn of the Xerces Society, and finally Wisteria Loeffler of Zenger’s Community Bee Project and her comb-wrangling colleague whose name I didn't get.

We learned more about pollination than I thought was possible at our age, including the fact that tomato flowers, because of their structure, are very hard to pollinate and require specialized vibrational behavior (a hum job, you might say) on the part of the bee.

The filmmaker who produced The Real Dirt on Farmer John happened to be there, with a sound guy, shooting footage for his next film. He really got in those little guys' faces.

Yesterday, I pitted 170 plums (I counted the pits) and stewed up a vat of plum compote. I'll freeze most of it in smaller containers. It'll be great for spooning over pancakes this winter, or ice cream, or folding into cake batter, or eating straight. Tomorrow I plan to bake a plum tart or three.

Back in April when the plum tree flowered, the blossoms seemed fairly sparse compared to the last couple of years. Plus, we had to cut one major branch in preparation for building the deck. I thought the harvest might be down this season, but that's obviously not the case. Good job, bees, on that pollination thing.

When I'm 74

2008-09-26T13:13:00.000-07:00

Today is Jerry's birthday. Doesn't he look good for a boy his age?

I got him a super-geeky gift, a t-shirt that displays wi-fi signal strength at the wearer's location. See? It's four bars inside, and two on the porch. This should be lots of fun strolling Hawthorne.

And here's the cake. It's chocolate, of course, under all that chocolate. Some people make fun of quilters for cutting up perfectly good fabric and sewing it back together again. This icing is just bittersweet chocolate, melted and mixed with a little cream. When it sets it's basically pure chocolate again. I see nothing wrong with that.

I've discovered that eating chocolate late in the day -- say, after a dinner of poulet Dijonnaise en filo, which is Jer's traditional birthday request, therefore on the menu for this evening -- keeps me awake at night every bit as much as coffee. So I encouraged the birthday boy to cut into his cake for breakfast. It didn't take much to persuade him. Happy birthday to you, sweetie.

Just desserts

2008-09-17T18:04:00.000-07:00

We've been on a baking kick lately. A couple of weeks ago, Jer made this cream-cheese-fruit tart with a shortbread crust. It was insanely delicious and, of course, very rich. He's making it again for dinner guests this weekend.

I was in the mood to do a big ol' classic streusel-topped coffee cake. I used Oregon hazelnuts in the topping and added a layer of apples and pears -- all windfalls from trees in the neighborhood -- plus a handful of local blueberries. This ended up as one of our contributions to the Rural Street block party.

Now that September's here, the Italian plums on our backyard tree are starting to come in. We're not deluged yet, but check back in a week or two. My mom used to make a plum kuchen, but I couldn't find her recipe so I used another one. The crust is more delicate than what she called her "cookie dough" crust, not that that's a problem. I need to do some more digging, though, and find Mom's version. It's around here somewhere.

The Pony Project

2008-09-01T14:53:00.000-07:00

We're behind the curve, curb-wise.

The Portland Horse Project started not long after Jer and I moved here. I added it to the list of reasons why I loved our new home town. I even acquired a couple of dollar-store ponies, thinking we'd tether them to the pair of rings right down the block. That was ages ago; inertia is a very powerful force.

According to Platial.com, there's a significant installed base of plastic equines around town. I don't know if anyone is actively installing ponies in Portland anymore, but we still spot new ones occasionally. So we finally got our act together, and turned Shadow and Goldie out to graze across the road from each other on Rural Street.

Are we kids, or what? Neigh; we're conceptual artists!

Breaking Through

2008-09-01T14:14:00.001-07:00

I've had this piece on my design wall since early March -- literally six months ago, oy -- and finally finished it a couple of days ago. I began by pawing through my bag o' remnants, mostly commercial fabrics, pulled some out, arranged them by color and value, and strip-pieced a series of scraps into a long, meandering ribbon. Then I added the spiky shapes on the sides, piecing some into the background, and fusing others. The paler spikes on the bottom are sheers -- plant-dyed organza and a cut-up polyester chiffon scarf (thanks, Mom) -- that I appliqued on, last thing.

I still haven't decided which perspective to take; it could be a plant growing out of the ground or sunlight shining through a slot canyon. My husband suggested the name Breaking Through, which I like because it works either way. It also symbolizes for me the political struggle that's been going on in this country for most of this year; I hope it'll prove prophetic and that we'll truly break through into the light, come November.

Jer has been gung-ho about this quilt since the beginning, and had it up on the wall behind his comfy chair half an hour after I finished sewing. It's sort of a companion piece to Occasional Sunbreaks, which hangs across the room.

100% Hybrid

2008-08-30T18:28:00.001-07:00

100% Hybrid
Originally uploaded by revalani

Does this make sense in any known universe? I don't even know what they intended it to mean.

A Shucking Discovery

2008-08-21T17:14:00.001-07:00

A Shucking Discovery
Originally uploaded by revalani

I've never seen anything like this before. Well, yes, I've seen something like this...

Let rise until duh- oh

2008-08-18T16:33:00.001-07:00

Let rise until duh- oh.
Originally uploaded by revalani

I used the same recipe as last time, the classic Tassajara whole wheat bread with some millet flour added because I happened to have it. I realized partway through -- i.e., when I walked into the kitchen and saw this -- that I usually cut the quantity in half.

It turned out fine, despite the mess.Two of the three loaves and fifteen of the sixteen burger rolls are in the freezer.

I don't use butter per se very often, but a slather on fresh-baked bread is butter's highest calling. Yes, "slather" is a noun, at least in this household.

Watch for Serendipity

2008-08-09T12:43:00.001-07:00

We were out walking last Sunday and I commented to Jer that we might take in an open house or two. Just joking; I know that touring real estate at random is not one of his favorite pastimes. That's probably a gender-linked characteristic.

Lo and behold, the REX house -- Recycle Everything eXperiment -- was open for inspection. This is Shannon Quimby and partners' attempt to do a major remodel without a dumpster on site. Not only did they reuse much of the original framing lumber in the new structure, they've imaginatively repurposed everything from archaic electrical wiring components (now cabinet door pulls) to trashy old miniblinds (plant markers for the garden). She's been blogging about it for the Oregonian, and I've been following the process, so I was jazzed at the chance to see it near completion. Once I dragged Jerry inside, he was fascinated, too.

On the way home we noticed this colorful reminder: Watch for Serendipity. We hadn't been, any more than usual, but apparently it was watching for us.

Unrelatedly, my birthday dessert photo was in my camera all this time. Here's Chef Jerub's Peach Bavarian. He'd never made one before, but it turned out beautifully, of course.

Gifts

2008-08-01T20:46:00.000-07:00

The girls next door believe in leprechauns. They showed us a tiny dwelling the other day that surely belonged to one. It looked like a bird house, but it was bright green (the same color as their garage door, oddly enough), and carpeted in rose petals. I'd move right in, if I were a leprechaun.

They also believe in magical fairy gifts. On more than one occasion, we've answered a knock at the door, realizing en route that it was best to rein in our distance vision and act surprised, and found a spray of flowers or a painted rock on our doormat. Most recently, it was a pair of stones, each wrapped in a leaf and tied with pink string, with a shell balanced on top. Later, a deconstructed coda: a rock in a leaf in a shell. Art is all about exploring your medium to the fullest.

Today's my birthday. It's an off year; I'm 61. Unlike most days, the friend calls outnumbered the telemarketers by about 8 to 3.

Jer and I acknowledged a while back that birthdates are arbitrary; we give each other gifts all year long. He cooked waffles from scratch last week, and chicken tagine served over bulgar with green beans almondine, and an incredible veggie dish consisting of shiitake mushrooms in a pinot noir sauce with asparagus and polenta. I'd requested salmon for my birthday dinner, and he made this amazing rendition with fresh basil, tomatoes and onions, cooked in foil on the grill. Sort of like a stone wrapped in a leaf, only much more succulent.

Saves

2008-07-18T13:50:00.000-07:00

Just one more post about last week's workshop. Unlike most of the fiber arts classes I've taken, this one included several accomplished printmakers who'd never worked with fabric or fiber-reactive dyes before. Gerrie and I proved to be resources for those folks, and they in turn gave us a new perspective. I'm generalizing wildly here, but it seems to me that printmaking is about precision; the desired result is a discrete object, the print itself. Art quilters have a different attitude; they'll try anything that might result in an interesting surface. There is such a thing as art cloth, where the finished yardage stands on its own, compositionally. But we don't hesitate to cut into the middle of a fabric we've created to get just the right fragment for a work in progress. Unlike printmaking, painting or weaving, the whole-cloth design often doesn't matter.

I've developed a practice of bringing unsuccessful efforts from previous workshops, or boring fabrics from my stash, to class, just to see whether a new process, an additional layer or two, might redeem them in some way. This piece (below) started life as a portion of a bedsheet. I overdyed it with purple and screen-printed my own made-up mysterious runic symbol all over it. Ho hum. In last week's class I painted a shadow effect around portions of the markings, hoping to get a sense of depth. Mmmm, not so much. I used a dye that someone had labeled "purple," but that turned out to be blood-red. Quite the color combination there:

But as the dye dried, either the soda ash in the dye mixture or some interaction between the red and the earlier turquoise, or the even earlier purple, pushed out a fine white line between colors. The overlaid red on turquoise is kind of interesting, too. Tiny portions of this overall failed effort actually show promise. If and when I use this piece, I'll probably zoom in on those cool little bits and leave the rest of the fabric in tatters:

Another piece started life as solid yellow commercial yardage, which I wrapped and overdyed in an indigo workshop last year. Experimenting with dye painting, I did a few brushstroke squiggles, immediately realized my error, and attempted to wash them out. But because I'd used orange, of which the red component is a notorious dye bully, the squiggles remained. The piece, overall, reminded me of light filtering down through water. So, in last week's workshop, I screened on several fish. I remembered to account for the eyes, but the overall effect was a basic silhouette, too elementary-schoolish (no pun intended). So I stenciled a few markings onto each fish and discharged them with our bleaching agent of choice, thiourea dioxide, a.k.a thiox. As it happens, neither turquoise dye nor indigo bow down to the lightening powers of thiox, so the blue crept right back in when I washed the piece. What to do? Common household bleach to the rescue! It turns out that Soft Scrub (tm) or lotion-style Comet (tm) with bleach does the job. I used the same stuff later to print my leaf stencil (visible on the red and orange fabrics here) onto denim. It worked great, and it's the perfect consistency for screening right out of the bottle.

Shortly after I first started quilting, I acquired somewhere a length of men's shirt-like fabric, light gray with faint stripes and a tiny pink-and-magenta repeated motif. At some point I stamped it randomly with a magenta grid pattern. That did not alter its deeply uninteresting nature; if anything, I'd managed to transform it into something overtly ugly. Last week in class I did a series of swirly monoprints over it, in green, and, on top of that, printed my Japanese maple photo emulsion screen. Close-cropped, it's more interesting, at least, than it used to be. If it doesn't work as whole cloth, I can always cut into it when I need a gray-magenta-green sort of busy intertwined fabric with men's-tie motif markings. You never know.

Poet F#@kin' Laureate!

2008-07-17T16:04:00.000-07:00

This is the best news I've heard in days. I'm so happy for Kay and her spouse Carol. I just hope they don't expect her to write a poem in praise of the current Administration.

Don't try this at home

2008-07-16T13:49:00.000-07:00

One takeaway from the workshop way of life is the realization that there are some techniques and processes you just don't want to pursue on your own. That, in itself, is often worth the price of admission. You get to try something new without investing in equipment and supplies that you'll probably never use again. Last week's screen printing workshop produced two such "never again" conclusions.

One was devoré, the process that produces those beautiful cut-velvet scarves and other garments you see in stores. It involves applying a pattern using a toxic chemical solution that eats away the cellulose fiber (rayon or cotton, for instance) in your fabric, leaving the sheer silk backing. After the solution dries, you iron the treated portions til they turn the color of café-au-lait. At that point the nap starts falling off in those areas; rubbing gently usually gets rid of the rest of it.

All this time you're wearing a fume respirator -- not just one of those puny dust masks -- and rubber gloves. One runs the risk of starting with a too-hot iron and, peut-être, scorching portions of the backing fabric all the way to espresso. When rubbing off the nap, one might rub a hole in the delicate, now-compromised, silk. Ask me how I know this. Between the ambient toxicity and the fiddliness of the process, I strongly suspect that this might have been my sole attempt in life at doing devoré. Still, I'll mend the holes with silk thread and dye the piece, and perhaps produce a scarf that comes with modest bragging rights.

I hesitate to dismiss photo emulsion as cavalierly as I have devoré. It's an interesting process and fabulously versatile, but it requires a darkroom, a light box, and considerable deftness in applying the emulsion to the screen. You start by preparing a black line image -- an ink drawing, a stencil pattern, a photograph that you've tweaked in Photoshop to get rid of the gray scale values -- and copy it onto transparent acetate. In the darkroom, you coat a screen with a liquid light-sensitive photo emulsion and let it dry. Then you lay the acetate on a light table, position the treated screen on top of it, and expose the image for four or five minutes. Finally, you wash the screen quickly, under a strong spray of water, while the image gradually emerges on the emulsion. On the unexposed portions -- the parts that were black on your original image and on the acetate copy -- the emulsion washes away, leaving clear areas on the screen. From that point on, you work with it as with any other stencil; the clear portions allow the dye through, the coated portions block it. You can burn more than one image on a large screen and, when you print, mask off the ones you're not using. I used a public domain Japanese stencil design (thank you, Dover Books), and one of my own photos of a Japanese maple. Here's my first screen in its virgin condition:

And here are a couple of the prints I made with them. I'm pleased with the crispness of the black stencil on denim, and with the multicolor tree on a hand-dyed orange-y cotton:

Later I burned another stencil, a delicate bamboo pattern, on a smaller screen. It gave me eight or ten nice prints, and then started producing big blobs along one edge. I realized to my horror that the emulsion was peeling off. Apparently these things happen. It was nice while it lasted. I'll just think of it as a limited edition print run:

Stella Luna visualizes a late-night snack

2008-07-15T22:29:00.000-07:00

I have a couple more posts about last week's screen printing workshop lined up and almost ready to go. In the meantime, here's a lucky catch. You might call it a reflection from the door glass superimposed on the critter outside, but I call it a rare and mystical glimpse into one cat's consciousness.

Five Days a Week

2008-07-15T19:12:00.000-07:00

Last week I remembered what it felt like to commute to work. Gerrie and I took turns driving out to OCAC, four days in a row, for yet another art workshop. We left home at 8:30 and got home between 4:30 and 5:00. On day five we had to drive separately, but the routine was the same. Everything else in our lives -- cooking, email, catching up with family -- had to be accomplished between our arrival back home and bedtime. How do working people manage? For me the pressure was greater than it would otherwise have been, because Jer was in New Hampshire for his high school reunion. I even had to prepare meals for myself; the horror.

The bright side is that the hours between 9 and 4 felt more like play than work. For five days we explored screen printing -- apparently the preferred term now, since silkscreens are no longer made out of silk -- from simple stencils made from freezer paper or masking tape to tricky photo emulsions. Here's my wall o' stuff -- some of the better stuff, at least -- at the end of the workshop:

When you're immersed in art, you see everything through art goggles. Both this bubble pattern in a soaking bucket and the remains of my midmorning snack struck me as potential silkscreen designs:

Got dye? The studio refrigerator (below) is full of dye solution, print paste and assorted other chemicals. No food allowed, needless to say. The retro aqua interior adds to the skeery effect, casting a sickly aura on its contents:

I love the point in a dye workshop when your fabrics come out of the washer, colors fixed, and you hang them on a clothesline in the full light of day. It's sort of like a gallery show. Here's some finished work -- mine and others -- drying on the line:

Surface Design

2008-07-06T22:56:00.000-07:00

My dear friend Mona gave me the t-shirt, so I had to join the Surface Design Association to make an honest woman of myself. Do you like what I've done with the cat hair? It's part of an ongoing mixed-media series, and perhaps my signature motif.

Speaking of surface design, here's the organza piece I re-dyed in last week's workshop, folded over a couple of times, which quadruples its intensity. The more I look, the more I see in it. Trippy, man:

I couldn't help but notice a similar lattice motif echoed in Jerry's latest artwork:

Taking the Fourth

2008-07-05T10:08:00.000-07:00

It was a quiet 4th of July in our little corner of Portland. Jer and I strolled down to the neighborhood parade, a four-block round-trip spectacle consisting of decorated kids, dogs, bikes and parents.

Afterwards, Otto's, a Woodstock Blvd temple of cured meats, gives out free hot dogs. The line appeared ridiculously long, but moved quickly. Two 4ths ago, I decided to have my first hot dog in decades and got hives all over my body. I considered that a message from the universe, and have passed on the 'dogs since then. Jer pronounced his "routine," but isn't "routine" what celebrations like this are all about?

Despite its intimate size, our parade rated a real fire engine and significant police escort. This must be the easiest duty these guys could possibly pull.

On our way home, we encountered this charming bit of home-grown neighborhood boosterism. The sign was posted by Maddie and Sarah, and it reads: "For people that are moving or visiting there is a flower garden here in Portland either <- that way or this way -> . So look both ways. Go one way and then the other and I bet you'll see it. Thank you."

Later on, we donned what we've come to call our Fireworks Shirts, the loudest tie-dye on the planet, and walked up to Oaks Bottom Pub for a late dinner. We were greeted with indulgent smiles and peace signs along the way. Twice, we were asked whether we'd gotten the shirts at Woodstock. Yes, we are old hippies. And your point is...?

Our fireworks game plan was to continue down 13th to Sellwood Blvd and watch the Oaks Park display from somewhere along the bluff. Perhaps we could catch a glimpse of the downtown show as well. But we turned a block early and ended up at the end of a cul-de-sac, possibly in someone's side yard and conceivably in the midst of a private party. By then it was dark, but the crowd was friendly and we hunkered down for the show. I'm pleased with how well my camera handled the low-light conditions. Apparently it has fireworks recognition built in.

Chef Jerub topped off the holiday weekend by making a perfect lattice-crust peach and berry pie. This is very similar to the one with which he won my heart almost 28 years ago.